The Demon Abraxas (8 page)

Beside her, the creature was speaking. He didn’t use English, but if she didn’t focus on his exact words she found she could understand the sense of them as well.

“We came into being before you,” he said. “Long ago we helped your people. Sometimes with knowledge and other times with a strong fist to protect you from yourselves. When your people called out for adversaries, some of my kind agreed to be what you wanted and to fight against you. That is the kind of being the one who calls himself Drake is. I am not that kind.”

“Are you saying that people wanted to be attacked by demons? That’s crazy. You’re totally blaming the victim.”

“If some of humanity want the experience of being beset by adversarial forces, where do you think those come from? Someone must agree to play the antagonist,” he said.

Ana understood the basic meaning of what he was saying, but that didn’t mean that it made sense to her. “I thought all demons were evil,” she said.

She hadn’t meant to voice that question and wasn’t sure she’d even said it out loud, but in this in-between space of being awake inside her dream, her thoughts had a voice of their own.

“We are harsh,” he said. “Divisive, pain-bringing, wrathful. But that does not prevent us from using those capacities to protect humans. I am one of the protector demons, not the adversaries.”

“Then why call yourself a demon at all?” she asked. “Where I come from, demons are evil and tricky and just out to take your soul.”

“We call ourselves many things, humans came up with the name ‘demon.’ Is there no one among you who understand this?”

“Why don’t you go looking for someone who knows what you’re talking about? I want you out of my dreams and out of my life.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“I traveled a long way. I’m too weak to stay in your world outside of your physical body.” He paused and they stood watching the ancient construction taking place for a while before he spoke again. “The men who captured you sought to put an adversarial demon in you, a creature of great malice. I helped you escape with your life and gave you back control of your body.”

She shuddered. He had a point, but the idea that having control over her own body was now optional horrified her.

He went on talking. “I can make you stronger and faster, as I did when we ran together. I can make your body mend itself more quickly. And I can teach you.”

“I don’t make deals with the devil,” she said.

“I am not anyone’s devil.”

She turned away from him. In the valley below, the scene faded and the wind blew sand in great mounds to obscure it all. She was alone and the air turned cold.

Her eyes opened on a white ceiling and sunlit window. According to the clock, she’d slept a good six hours and she felt surprisingly well-rested. It was late morning now and she had an agenda. Before evening, she wanted to be closer to seeing the summoners in jail and this thing out of her head.

After that dream she couldn’t go on toying with the notion that she was just losing it from the trauma. She wasn’t sure if the thing was actually talking to her or if her own mind was interpreting the experience for her, but either way it was time to assume she had some kind of spirit creature in her. In her life she’d seen a few incidents she considered miraculous and felt the presence of something supernatural and awe-inspiring, so it was possible there were other forces she didn’t know about, but this wasn’t how she planned to explore that part of the world. She had two goals now: get rid of the thing in her head and bring the guys who’d put it in her to their personal experience of hell.

The smell of frying bacon drifted up from the kitchen and her stomach growled. She pushed herself up. The dream remained so clear she expected to see sand on her toes, but they were clean and taped at the base where the gauze bandage stuck to her foot. Scrunching forward, she peeled the tape away and looked at the sole of her foot. Many small scabs dotted the pink landscape, but it didn’t look nearly as raw as it had at the hospital. The man in her dream of the desert said he could make her heal faster and that seemed to be true. She pressed the tape back into place and swung her legs over the side of the bed.

Although her bedroom was sparse, it was one of Ana’s favorite rooms in the house. As the only girl in her family, she’d gotten her own bedroom at an age when her two brothers still bunked down together. If not for the mystery of girlhood, it would have been a point of great contention. Of course her bed was an old, strange-smelling mattress in a walk-in closet, but late at night when her family was asleep that bed was all the comfort in the world to her. Alone in the dark she could think anything she wanted and imagine a life in which kids didn’t stare at her and her raggedy brothers, and talk about them in undisguised whispers. She could dream of a time when her oldest brother Mack didn’t take out his rage on her and Gunnar. Through college and after, in her apartment, she always loved having her own room and being in her bed.

Ruben had the bigger room on the other side of the hall with a grand bed and two huge armoires, plus a makeup table, dresser, and matching bedside tables. He was always the refinement to her carelessness. They’d met three years ago when she was dating his former roommate. He seemed to like living with lesbians, though he was a lot better with home repair than she was, so it wasn’t from any mistaken notion about her butch skills. If she had to guess, she’d say he liked living with someone who never competed for his attention and had a completely different set of values about what was attractive. Her relationship with his former roommate hadn’t worked out because of the restlessness that killed most of her intimate relationships, but she’d come out of the deal with Ruben and that seemed like a more than fair trade.

They’d lived together for just over two years now and she only regretted it on the nights when she heard loud sex from his bedroom or when she had to limp up basement stairs without a railing. He’d bought this house as a foreclosure and restored most of it himself, but he had a bad habit of leaving the fix-up jobs ninety-five percent finished. Ana was about ready to teach herself to tile just to complete the downstairs bathroom sink backsplash.

She stood up slowly but her feet didn’t hurt beyond a light ache that was easy to ignore. Her muscles were another matter. She felt like she’d seriously overtrained. Her head ached and her left shoulder was badly jammed into its socket. As soon as she had some food in her stomach, she was taking another dose of the painkillers.

One of her favorite T-shirts for sleeping in and a pair of loose sweatpants sat on the chair next to her dresser, where she’d thrown them a day ago when she got ready for work. She shrugged out of Ruben’s robe and got herself into the pants and shirt.

Once she made it into the downstairs hall, she caught the scents of savory onions and dark coffee. She picked up speed heading toward the kitchen. Ruben was an average cook, but he had a few dishes he knew well and bacon and eggs was top of the list. He said he practiced it so he could impress lovers with his morning-after breakfast skills.

When he saw her, he wiped his hands on the dishtowel tucked behind the string of his favorite dark gray apron and pulled her in for a hug. She winced as his arm brushed her shoulder but hid the gesture by turning her face into his body. They’d been mistaken for a couple fairly often and they did make a handsome pair. Ruben had the classic good looks of a Calvin Klein underwear model and Ana knew her smile made up for the Midwestern rest of her face.

Ruben let her go and she settled on a stool by the cutout window between the dining room and kitchen. He put a cup of black coffee in front of her and she wrapped her hands around it gratefully.

He waited for her to take a few sips and then asked, “Honey, what the hell happened last night?”

She really had no idea where to start. He needed to know, particularly if she was going to keep talking to the police until this was resolved, but how could she tell him she’d been taken to a demon summoning ritual and…

“That must have been some date,” he added under his breath as he poured a mixture of eggs, sour cream and scallions into the skillet.

“Date?”

“Sabel lit out of here like a cat with her tail on fire as soon as I got in—and I’m pretty sure she was wearing your yoga pants.”

“She was?”

“Mmhm, the stretchy ones that make your ass look cute and that gray rowing shirt that has to be yours. I’m sure girlfriend hasn’t rowed a day in her pretty little life.”

“Oh. God.” Ana dropped her forehead to rest on the windowsill.

If she hadn’t been so sore, she’d have run up the stairs to confirm her suspicion about what that particular pair of yoga pants was supposed to keep covered up. Fate had to be allied against her if, after everything, Sabel chose to lift
that
particular pair.

While her head was down, Ruben let out a long whistle and one dry fingertip touched the side of her collar and pushed it out so he could look further underneath it. “Sweetheart, how big is that bruise?”

“Big,” Ana mumbled without lifting her head.

“She is
not
worth that.”

She snapped upright. “Ru, this isn’t from Sabel. We didn’t do anything.”
Other than me bodily throwing her out of my bed
.

He raised an eyebrow and shifted the eggs off the burner.

“I went to check on Helen and some guys grabbed me—really fucked-up, crazy-ass guys. I got away but I was pretty banged up and Sabel…she was worried about Helen too and she helped get me to the hospital. Then she stayed.”

“I need to hear the long version of that story,” he said, staring at her. “One minute.”

He finished the scrambled eggs and put them on two plates with toast and bacon, carried the plates into the dining room, and set them at two adjacent places. Ana sat at her plate and took a few bites before launching into a longer version of the events of the night before.

“At Helen’s building there were these men carrying in what looked like a body, so I called 911—”

“Was it?” he asked.

The eggs caught in Ana’s throat and she washed them down with a long drink of her cooling coffee. “Helen, yes,” she managed. “I think they killed her. Then they saw me so they grabbed me and took me somewhere. They wanted to do this ritual.”

“Seriously? Like Satanic cult stuff?”

“Pretty much. So they uncuffed me to offer me to their demon or whatever and I ran for it.” She touched her shoulder. “I think I got this busting through a door, or maybe when I fell in the driveway. It’s all muddled. I just ran like hell and then they were chasing me and Sabel…she went to Helen’s after I did and saw my phone in the street and realized I was in trouble. So she was driving around—”

“Wait, she found your phone and just started driving around looking for you? How long were you kidnapped for?”

Ana tried to add it up in her head and it came to a much longer amount of time than made sense in the story—three or four hours including the time she was unconscious. Had Sabel really driven around for that long looking for her? How did she know which way to go and was that ability connected in some way to whatever she did that dropped the man with the phone? It had to be.

“A few hours,” Ana told him.

“And you two have met what, three or four times? And she drove around for hours looking for you?”

“Um.”

“And then somehow, miraculously, she finds you running from the bad guys?”

Ruben set his fork down and sat back in his chair with his eyebrows drawn in and his stare completely focused on her.

“They weren’t exactly quiet about chasing me,” Ana said. “She probably just followed the yelling.”

“Where were the cops?” He spread his hands wide.

“At Helen’s, I’d guess.”

“So Sabel just pulls up in her badassmobile and you jumped in to safety?”

“Something like that.”

“Ana.” His arms folded tightly across his chest. She wasn’t going to get away with being that vague.

“Two guys caught me and I knocked out one of them and the other one tased me with a stun gun. Then Sabel knocked him out and kind of half-carried me to her car. I tried to call you from the hospital.”

“Oh shit, I turned my phone off.”

“Jerk.”

“I’m sorry. If I’d known you were going to get yourself kidnapped and tased…” His joking expression turned serious and he unfolded his arms to reach across the table with one hand and touch her wrist. “Are you okay?”

Ana shrugged. “I’m shook up a lot and I hurt, but nothing serious. Oh, I could have really used a basement railing or a big strong guy to carry me up the stairs. And I’m pretty sure I demolished any chance of getting a date with Sabel.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I kind of kicked her off my bed, literally, and I almost hit her while I was panicking.”

“Sweet thing, this woman drove around for hours trying to find you, pulled you out of a serious scrape and then brought you home and stayed all night to make sure you were okay. That’s the most fucking romantic story I’ve ever heard.”

“When you put it that way…”

She couldn’t suppress her grin. The way he said it made it sound like she still had a pretty good chance to salvage things. He opened his mouth to go on, but the phone rang. The number was the general exchange for Roth Software.

When she picked up, Detlefsen bellowed into her ear, “Ana! How the fuck are you?” When under stress or agitation, he had the foulest mouth of any executive she’d ever met. He only got away with it because he so clearly cared about the people who worked for him that no one could take offense.

“I’m all right,” she said. “I really didn’t get hurt much, just scared.”

“After they told me about Helen…” He trailed off.

She swallowed hard but couldn’t think of anything to say.

He continued, “Hell of a thing! That goddamned motherless fuck killed her.”

“What? Who?”

“Nathan Drake, that asshole playboy investor. He and Helen were an item, apparently, did she tell you?”

“No, never a word.” Ana tried to remember if she’d missed something, but she felt certain that Helen had never mentioned Drake. She was under the impression that Helen didn’t know him.