The Devil You Know (9 page)

An
idea occurred to her for the first time, and she felt like an idiot for not
having thought of it before. “You followed us, didn’t you? From the party?”

“No!”
he protested desperately.

“Then
someone else did.”

“If
someone did, then I didn’t know about it. I swear.”

“Then
how else do you explain it?” she asked.

“I
don’t know,” he insisted. “Couldn’t he have just…looked through her purse?”

“Jesus,”
Marie whispered. It was the simplest answer yet, and she knew she had been a
fool to think Elise would be safe in her little house so far from the Piedmont
mansion. She sighed and said, “I should have done more to protect her.”

“You
couldn’t have known,” Colin said.

He
was trying to comfort her, she realized, and it made her angry. “Well you
did
know, Colin. You knew what would
happen.”

“I
didn’t!” he insisted.

“I
don’t believe you, Colin. I don’t.” She took a deep breath. “Do you know what’s
going to happen now? They’re sending her to Camarillo if she doesn’t come out
of this. How do I get her better, Colin?”

There
was only silence. Marie felt like she could hear Colin’s fear coming through
the line.

“Does
Piedmont know how to stop this? Is there something in that goddamned book?”

“Marie,
please! You can’t bully Julian. If he knows, he won’t tell. And if you try to
blackmail him…you’ll end up worse than your friend.”

Thinking
still of going to the police, she said, “So he’s done that to others?”

“I
can’t say. I won’t say. If you’re thinking of making me go to the police…Marie,
I’ll kill myself first.”

“You’re
pathetic,” she spit out and wished the man was in front of her so she could
slap his face, or worse. “You can’t expect me to just let Elise go, can you? Do
nothing?”

“You
have to. The demon got to her. Whatever he did, whatever they do to the women,
he did it a little too much, or too fast.”

“Are
you saying they’re all going to end up like this? All of the women those…things
sleep with?”

“I
don’t know.” He seemed to be pleading with her not to ask such questions
anymore.

“But
what do you
think
? What do you
think
, Colin? Is it, or isn’t it?”

His
answer was just above a whisper. “Probably.”

“Jesus,”
Marie replied, a mixture of horror, disgust, and disbelief pushing her anger to
the side. She felt defeated and looked at the floor for a moment, as she tried
to ignore the sound of Colin’s breathing as it came over the line. Then she
took a deep breath and stood up straight. “Colin,” she said calmly, “do you
want to save yourself?”

“Oh
God, yes,” he answered, and she heard the sob in his voice.

“Then
you’re going to have to pull yourself together and get me the names of other
women those things have been with. They need to be warned.”

Through
his sniffling, Colin was able to whisper, “I can’t.”

“Then
I’m calling the police. They won’t be able to charge you, but they’ll question
you, and Julian’ll know about it. I’ll make sure he knows about it.”

“No!”
Colin shouted. Then again, more quietly, he said, “No.” There was a moment’s
silence in which Marie let him regain his composure. When he spoke again, he
sounded calmer. “I don’t know where the incubi go or who they’re with. And I
can’t start asking them. There’s so much I don’t know, and I don’t think even
Julian knows. The women…I think they’re marked somehow. Once they start with a
woman, I don’t think they let them be. Ever.”

He
sighed deeply, and Marie waited for more. Finally, his voice trembling, he
continued, “This afternoon, after I left you at the theater, I called Julian to
see if he needed me. I promise I didn’t mention you or anything else. Julian
said one of the incubi needed a ride back to the estate. He gave me the
address. It’s…” Marie could hear shuffling sounds for a moment. Then he came
back on the line. “It’s 1817 Ivar. I went there and got him. It’s a little
apartment building.”

“Which
demon was it?”

“He
looks like Cary Grant.”

Marie
remembered him from the party. “And you don’t know the woman’s name?”

“No.
It’s the best I can do. I promise.”

Marie
nodded, as though Colin were there to see it. “It’s a start,” she said calmly
as she reached into her purse for a pen. “But if you really want to save
yourself, Colin,” she continued while writing the address he’d given her on the
back of the business card, “you’ll find a way to start asking questions. Get me
more information. Do you understand me?”

“And
you’ll talk to the priest about me? See if he’s willing to help me?”

“Father
Joe? No. I told you before, I won’t intercede for you. I’m going to try and
save some of these women, Colin. And maybe Elise in the process. Saving your
soul…that’s up to you.”

She
hung up without waiting for his reply. Then she tucked her things back into her
purse and turned to leave, wondering if she would really find the gumption to
go tell a complete stranger that the man she was sleeping with was a demon bent
on her destruction. Maybe she’d need a few strong drinks first, or at the very
least some more information.

Chapter Eight

Malliol
had a secret he desperately needed to keep from the others. He was defective.
At least, that was his suspicion. When the others talked about their conquests,
they never mentioned the uncanny feeling that the women still lingered in their
minds. But such lingering plagued Malliol. The worst part was their voices.
When it had just been one or two, he had been able to stand it, like being in a
room with a couple of conversations happening around him. But now that he had
been with more than a dozen women, their chatter in his mind was cacophonous.
Each distinct personality carried on, raving in its confusion. Though he felt
physically stronger with each dalliance, he feared that the psychic effects
would soon do him in. The only thing that could make it worse was if the bits
of each woman could converse with the others. If they ganged up on him, he
knew, they would obliterate him. As it was, he was barely able to maintain his
sense of self.

He
had been the first incubus Colin Krebs had called forth, and thus had been the
victim of the man’s halting incantation, poor vocabulary and Laodicean faith.
When Krebs had conjured the rest, he had done so with considerably more care
and attention to detail. As a result, the others were the perfect monsters they
were meant to be, and knew exactly how to go about their business. They seemed
able to milk their victims slowly, sucking away at their spirits bit by bit,
while Malliol seemed unable to do anything but devour their souls in ravenous
frenzy. It was the speed with which he wrenched the women from their very
selves that must have accounted for the way their personalities came along,
turning them into spiritual passengers who tormented him constantly.

If he could have stopped gathering women to him, he would
have, but his hunger for them drove him in spite of the unpleasant after
effects. He had not had a new woman in days, and he had used up the last one
completely on Sunday, leaving her naked in her bed, staring at the ceiling, her
chest barely moving with each shallow breath. She might have been dead by now,
he told himself. He hoped she was.
The
bitch
, he thought, rage building up in him as he listened to her voice
inside his head. Why did they all have to stay in his mind this way? he
wondered, his teeth set so firmly against each other that they might well have
cracked. In time, he knew he would be free of the voices—when this
conjured body was spent and he could take the women’s spirits with him, where
they would be tormented forever. That would show them, he told himself. They
could toy with him now, but his time would come.

Until
then, the need for female flesh directed his every move. It was what had driven
him here to the place Julian had called Musso’s, although the sign on the
outside of the building read “Musso and Frank’s.” The restaurant on Hollywood
Boulevard had a large bar at the back, and it was here that Malliol usually
started hunting for new prey.

There
were plenty to choose from today. Diners crowded into every table in the main
part of the restaurant, and overflowed into the bar. Malliol sipped a drink
called a Gibson and watched with a practiced eye as women entered the bar.
Because of the facial features Julian had selected for Malliol, the women
watched him as well. The problem with the restaurant was that many of the
female clientele arrived with male escorts, and though Malliol caught many of
them staring lasciviously, few could be persuaded to leave the bar with someone
different. Occasionally, though, a woman would come in alone; these were often
easy prey, usually lonely or recently rejected. Even better, though, were the
groups of women who came into the bar without men and sat at the tiny tables
with their drinks before them, laughing at one thing and then another. Julian
called these “hen parties,” and Malliol had gotten good at inserting himself
into them and picking out the one woman in the group willing to go off on her
own.

Today,
there were no hen parties. He felt tense, his hunger for flesh and spirit sharp
and nagging, the chorus of other women’s voices in his head making him tremble.
And then she came in; a little blonde in a tweed skirt and a cardigan, walking
straight up to the bar. Her nose was red, and so were her eyes. From the neck
down, she looked like someone’s secretary, and from the neck up like a recently
jilted lover.

Malliol
felt desire for her and saw her as attainable. Glancing around, he also saw
clear signs that several other men at the bar were thinking the same thing.
Eyebrows rose as the little blonde tipped back one whiskey and ordered another.
But Malliol knew that none of them had what he did; none of them had the wide
eyes and wavy hair, the hint of a sneer when he smiled and the irrepressible
swagger when he walked. Julian had told him his features resembled a man named
James Cagney, and Malliol knew how to play this similarity to his advantage.

He
also knew that possessing the young woman would add one more to the voices in
his head, but there was nothing to be done about it. Desire outweighing dread,
he decided that the little blonde was his. He got off his barstool, walked
around three other patrons, and leaned on the bar next to her. “What do you say
I buy you the next one?” he asked as he tapped his finger on the side of her
glass.

She
looked at him without smiling and said, “If you want to spend your money on me,
I won’t say no. But I gotta tell you right now I ain’t interested in making a
new friend.”

He
raised an eyebrow. “Hard to get, eh?” It was not something he was used to
encountering in the women he targeted. When she gave no response, he took the
stool next to her. “Barman?” He pointed at her empty glass and then tapped the
bar in front of him, indicating that he wanted the same for himself. With an
elbow on the bar, he leaned a little farther, blocking the woman’s view from
half of the other men who watched her. “I couldn’t help but notice you look a
little sad there,” he said.

She
tipped her glass back and set it on the bar before turning to regard him again.
“You didn’t hear me when I said that part about new friends, did you?”

He
nodded. “I heard you. I’ll tell you what, though. You drink with me, and I’ll
do you a little favor.”

“I
don’t need favors,” she said, a slight slur in her voice.

He
nodded. “Well, I think you do.” Without being too obvious, he indicated the
other men at the bar. “If you don’t let me drink with you, you’ll have every
one of these cocky bastards coming to this very barstool to try his luck with
you. Would you rather fight off a whole parade of beaus, or just put up with me
for a while?”

She
thought about it for a moment and then tapped her glass. “Fair enough,” she
finally said. “If you’re buying, that is.”

“That
I am, sister,” he said, signaling the bartender again. “That I am.”

After
they drank, he said, “No ring, I see. No husband to drive you to drink.
So…boyfriend?”

She
hesitated a moment, and then said, “Boss.”

“Ahh,”
he said with a knowing smile. “Been taking more than letters from him, I bet.”

“That’s
how he wanted it,” she said, the liquor now loosening her tongue. “But I fought
him off.” She gave an ironic smile. “Thought I was damned smart, I did. Kept
that son of a bitch’s paws off me and kept my job for a whole eight months.”

“Until?”

“Son
of a bitch fired me,” she said, a tremble in her voice. If she started crying
now, Malliol knew, he might not get as lucky as he had thought.

“Well
now, that’s even more reason you shouldn’t have to buy your own drinks,”
Malliol said. He looked her in the eyes and shook his head. In his mind, he saw
her naked and writhing under him, maybe even weeping from shame. The thought
excited him even further. “I can’t imagine why any man wouldn’t want to keep
you around. You look like a real peach. I bet he couldn’t find a better
secretary in the whole city.”

“A
better secretary, no.” The bartender had filled her glass, and she drained it
again. “But he found someone else who’d warm his bed. So he gave her more than
a roll in the hay.”

“Your
job.”

“My
goddamn job.”

He
shook his head. “Damn shame. So now what’ll you do?”

She
picked up her glass. “Drink.”

“Hear,
hear.” The bartender filled their glasses yet again, and they clinked them
together for the first time. Malliol was beginning to feel a little drunk himself
now. “You know,” he said, “there’s something else you could do besides just
drink your sorrows away.”

“Oh
yeah, smart guy? What?”

“Have
you ever heard the saying, ‘Living well is the best revenge’?”

She
looked confused. “Living…what?”

“Living
well is the best revenge,” he repeated. “You get yourself a better job and walk
back into that guy’s office wearing fur.”

She
laughed. “Fat chance at that.”

“I
don’t know. I could maybe help you out.”

“You?”
she asked incredulously. She stared searchingly at him. For a moment, he felt
vulnerable, as though she was about to discover him, and then anger at his own
weakness welled up in him. He stared back at her and thought of the depths of
hell he’d drag her to if she’d only give in to him. If she only knew, he thought,
she’d sober up right away and run screaming from the bar. He wanted her to
scream, but not right away—later, when they were alone. The thought made
his lips twitch.

Holding
back his anger, he said, “I could buy and sell you, sister. You and your former
boss.”

“How?”

“Movie
money makes this town run, right? Well, I got armloads of it.”

Again,
she regarded him. Faint recognition dawned on her. “You’re not…?”

He
stopped her. “Nah, I ain’t him. I could buy and sell him, too. The real money’s
in the executive offices. That’s where I am. How’d you like to pass through the
gates at Piedmont every day and go to work up in the big building? Big desks,
soft leather chairs, nobody trying any funny business with you.”

“And
you’ve got jobs to give away. Just like that?”

He
snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”

She
swirled the tiny bit of liquor left in her glass around and around. She stared
at the glass, seeming hypnotized by it. Finally, she slurred, “I think I could
maybe go for that if you’re really who you think you say you are.”

“One
hundred percent. What do you say we skip out of here? Find someplace better to
talk it over.”

Her
eyes glazing over, she said, “I know an apartment right over around here where…I
live.” She giggled unselfconsciously. “’S not far.”

“Well,
let’s go then.”

Without
looking around to see if anyone else at the bar was staring at him with envy,
Malliol stood up and paid for their drinks. He took the young woman’s arm and
helped her off her stool. She weaved on her high heels a bit at first, but then
steadied herself as they headed for the door. He kept telling himself to focus
only on her and not the voices in his head; all the confused women he had
already possessed were trying to make sense of what they were doing inside
Musso and Frank’s getting this woman drunk and leaving with her. One more would
soon join their ranks, something Malliol dreaded and anticipated with equal
intensity.