Demon Crossings (7 page)

Except he couldn’t have known where she’d park to dial the sheriff. And it also didn’t explain why the sheriff hadn’t even blinked at the sword. Or why Aiden carried around a sword real and sharp enough to decapitate something. The sheriff might have been in on it, and the dispatcher, the people at the diner…or she might actually be crazy. Again, it worried her how reassuring the crazy option felt.

Fen barely glanced at her on his way into the kitchen. Two women followed behind him, twins by the look of it—raven haired as Fen but with paler skin and startling dark eyes. One of them had dyed the tips of her hair purple, maybe so people could tell them apart. They both eyed her curiously and Aiden introduced them as Elin and Rane Hamlin. Rane, the one with purple tips, smiled as she sat on the couch.

Taking the other chair, Elin gave Grace a welcoming smile. “Nice to have another girl join the party.”

Rane looked her up and down, not seeming particularly impressed. “Let’s not be hasty. We don’t even know what she can do yet.”

Elin transferred her smile to a newcomer, a man who was taller than Aiden by a good six inches, thinner too. Aiden didn’t have an ounce of fat on him, but his shoulders were broad and there was a sense of sturdy dependability to him. This man, dressed in slacks and a button down shirt, was built along lean, elegant lines. His blond, wavy hair was carefully combed and gelled.

“This is Christian,” Aiden said, crossing to stand beside her chair.

Christian nodded politely and sat down next to Elin, who looked as if she wanted to climb into his lap. He stretched an arm out behind her and crossed his legs at the ankle. “Fen,” he called out. “While you’re in there, bring me a glass of water. A clean glass this time. With ice. And you might want to get our Gracie a shot of whisky. She looks like she might need it.”

Aiden put a hand on her shoulder but she shrugged it off. Christian met her gaze, amused. “So is it true you followed Maia here or are we wasting our time?”

Even Fen paused in the doorway, balancing glasses, waiting for her response. She took a deep breath. “Look. I don’t know what’s going on here but I don’t want any part of it. I’ll call the rental company about the accident and—”

“Tell them that you
accidently
ran over a fire demon?” Fen started forward again, handing Christian his glass of water and sitting down on the floor at Elin’s feet. He grinned and slid the shot glass down the coffee table. “Twice?”

“It was a wolf.” She knew damn well it hadn’t been but was fully prepared to lie her ass off if it got her home in one piece. Curiosity and shock had given them a chance to lead her meekly back to Aiden’s home but she was starting to regain her equilibrium and it seemed best to stuff her questions for now and make a break for it. She
would
help Aiden find his daughter, but it would be on her own terms.

“You know it wasn’t a wolf,” Aiden said gently. “No one here will hurt you, Grace. We just need to get to the bottom of this. We need to know how you did it. For Maia’s sake and, believe it or not, for your sake too.”

She twisted around to look up at him. “For my sake? I’m not stupid. Don’t try to pretend this is about keeping me safe. I decide what risks I’m willing to take.”

He held up a hand. “Grace…”

“Did you drug me?”

A muscle in his jaw clenched. “No.”

“Do you plan to hold me here against my will?”

He crouched next to her chair. “We’ll let you go if that’s what you decide but first we need to talk. I think we can both help each other out.”

She was shaking her head.

He touched her knee. “You don’t even know what you are.”

That’s it.
She stood and headed for the door. She wasn’t going to stick around and listen to this crap. People had been trying to fix her for as long as she could remember. No one moved except Aiden, who caught her arm before she’d taken two steps. “Sit down.”

She tried to jerk free and his hand tightened. No way could she break that steel grip. She looked into his eyes but there was no give there either.

“Please,” he said. “Sit.”

He gave her a little tug and this time she didn’t fight it. She wasn’t ready to use her gun. If they didn’t let her go, she’d need a better plan of escape than bolting out the front door and running down the dirt road. She sat. Elin gave her a sympathetic smile. Fen grinned and looked pointedly at the shot glass. Grace shook her head. She wouldn’t eat or drink anything they gave her until she figured out what was going on. For now, she’d have to play along and see where it took her. Aiden pulled a chair up next to her.

She lifted her chin. “So go ahead. I’m listening…you were talking about fire demons.”

He ignored the taunt and started to speak again with irritating calm. “There’s a confluence of energy lines here that creates a weakness in the fabric of this world. When the energy levels flare, it’s possible to cross between dimensions.”

That stirred a bit of memory. “Are you talking about ley lines?”

“You have heard this before.”

She scowled. “On TV. From fantasy books and sci-fi movies. You can’t really expect me to believe it.”

“Should I have held on to the demon a while longer?” Fen asked. “Do you need another look? I thought one would be enough to convince you.”

Grace turned to glare at him. “I thought you were getting rid of it.”

He smiled. “I ran the carcass through the incinerator but we could probably scare up another. The gate’s been unstable lately.”

“I don’t want to see another one,” she snapped.

“Well, none of us do,” Rane put in. “But we can’t just ignore them. Let them go rampaging through town. You stopped that thing before it could find a little kid or some unsuspecting hiker.”

Grace noticed Aiden staring at her hands and she gripped the armrests to stop them from shaking.

Christian turned his attention from her to Aiden. “She’s scared shitless and stubborn as hell. She’s not going to listen to anything you have to tell her. Why not just let her ride with us tonight?”

Elin frowned. “Tonight?”

He reached out idly and stroked the back of her neck. “Full moon tonight. There’ll be another surge and—”

“No.” Aiden’s tone was final.

Christian raised his eyebrows. “She can ride with me if you’re worried she’ll be in your way. I can handle her.”

Aiden stood. “I think that’s enough. Let her process this for now.”

Fen shook his head. “Why bother? It doesn’t matter if she believes us or not if she didn’t track Maia like you said she did.”

Aiden’s expression was guarded. “She did.”

“Is it true, Grace?” Christian asked. She didn’t like his voice—too cultured, too smooth. A salesman…or a psychiatrist. Someone who lied for a living.

She’d hedge her bets. It seemed a good idea to give them at least a piece of the truth, bolstering it with what Aiden would already know from his internet search. “I’m a private investigator from St. Louis. Maia’s grandmother hired me to find her. I tracked her here and was going to call—”

“How?” Aiden interrupted. “How exactly did you track her?”

She shot him an annoyed look. “The car. The neighbor recognized the father and wrote down the plates.”

Aiden stared at her. “Bullshit.”

“Someone always sees something,” she told him. “People get sloppy. Even the ones with something to hide. You weren’t as careful as you thought.”

“There was no car, Grace,” he said. “How do you think we got her out so quickly? We opened our own portal into her bedroom and snatched her back here. It took less than five minutes. No one saw anything and you know it.”

She gaped at him, unable to come up with a quick response to that.

His eyes bore into hers. “She doesn’t need psychiatric treatment. She’s not crazy and neither are you.”

“So, knowing that I’d come for Maia you were just going to let me drive out of town? Or is that what this is—some crackpot scheme to keep me from turning you all in?”

“I didn’t know it. I knew you were a private investigator but not that you were after Maia. I would have alerted the town, moved Maia as a precaution. I found one interview where a neighbor said she thought a psychic was helping the police but I didn’t really believe it.”

Grace laughed. “You’re trying to sell me Norse gods and fire demons but you don’t believe in psychics?”

“I thought it had to be coincidence until I realized you could see the fire demon too. That only makes sense if you’re one of us. I don’t know why your parents didn’t tell you.”

“My parents were normal.” That was a lie. They weren’t normal at all but they sure as hell weren’t Norse gods.

Aiden rubbed at his chin. “Maybe they were second or third-generation runners. They might not even have known the risk of producing a child so far away from the fault. Your ability means your blood is as strong as ours and that you’re in danger out there.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m in danger…
out there
where I’ve lived all my life. As opposed to here with my kidnappers.”

“We haven’t kidnapped you.”

She snorted. “You’re telling me…what then? That I’ll get sick and die if I try to go home?”

“Not sick. You’ve survived this long so there’s not an immediate threat. Eventually, you’d start to lose your grip on reality one piece at a time.”

She swallowed the lump in her throat and looked down at her lap when he turned away. The others had fallen silent but were hanging on every word. “You’re a seer and a tracker.” Aiden said softly. “It’s a rare combination. We haven’t been able to locate another from any of the clans.”

When she raised her eyes he was standing next to the mantel, looking at his daughter’s picture. Unwillingly moved to pity, she shifted in her seat. If nothing else was true, she knew that he grieved for his child and that hit on her biggest weakness. She’d always been a sucker for good parents who only wanted their children back.

“At least tell me if she’s still alive, Grace. You can run if you need to. Lie about everything else but tell me the truth about this one thing.”

Eyes hooded and solemn, he braced for her answer. She had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. The adrenaline rush was leaving her system, some of her fight along with it. She could feel Aiden again, that deep, heavy sadness rolling toward her across the small room. It was in her best interest to lie and run but she couldn’t do it. She wet her lips. “Yeah. She’s still alive.”

He closed his eyes and Grace reached for the shot of whisky. It burned all the way down. When she glanced at the others, Christian was toying with Elin’s hair while Elin beamed tearfully at her. Rane gave her a short nod of approval and Fen stared at Aiden, who still hadn’t moved.

After a moment, Aiden turned around and said to the others, “Go get some rest. Be back here by midnight.”

She’d never been on a horse before this week. This one was much bigger than she remembered, black and unnaturally still beneath Aiden’s hand. The only compensation was that she had an excuse to wrap her arms around Aiden’s waist, feel his muscles tighten beneath her hands, press her cheek against his back and breathe him in. She shouldn’t enjoy it so much. He was still a stranger, possibly insane, but he was also a nice distraction from the fact that her whole world had changed. Fire demons. Portals to other dimensions. Sword-wielding Norse gods. And the craziest part was that she half believed him. She half
wanted
to believe him because that would mean she wasn’t wrong about him—that he actually was a good man. And then it wouldn’t be wrong for her to want him.

There were two other men and a woman also on horseback. One of them was Christian, cool and elegant as ever, but Aiden hadn’t taken the time to introduce the others. Since this afternoon and her admission that she could sense his daughter, he’d been very careful not to overwhelm her. He seemed to have a better grasp on her limits than even she did.

Now, he turned his head and in an undertone told her, “Your only job is to hold on.”

Fine by her. She didn’t want to see one of those things again but she needed to. She’d been thinking about it all day. She hadn’t taken anything to eat or drink for the last eight hours and nothing else strange had happened. If she’d been given some kind of hallucinogen, it was oddly specific. Just the one awful and extended hallucination of that monster leaping after her, fire flaring red beneath its skin as its mouth gaped open and its claws extended toward her, ripping into metal. Now she was clear-headed and needed to know if that memory was real before she made a decision about anything. In Aiden’s living room it had all seemed impossible but out here at the edge of the woods in the dark… Here anything seemed possible.

The moon was full and high and the woods were strangely silent. Even the cicadas had stopped. A crow cawed from somewhere ahead of them, hidden in the trees. Moonlight dropped through the treetops, making shifting patterns on the ground whenever the wind blew. At the sound of a soft noise behind her, Grace turned her head.

A rustle and heavy flap, the wind from the downdraft touched her skin an instant before the edge of a sharp feather sliced her cheek. The crow was enormous. Cackling, it landed on Christian’s outstretched arm and he grunted at the weight. The crow cocked its head and looked directly at Grace with glassy black eyes before blinking and refocusing its attention on Aiden. No one seemed to find this at all remarkable.

After a moment, Aiden nodded and Christian tossed the bird into the air, pulling back his arm as it lifted its ungainly body into the night. Just when she thought it was too heavy to rise, the crow caught its balance and the stroke of its wings slowed into a glide as it wheeled around and disappeared into the woods.

The change in air pressure was like a weight against her skin. She tightened her grip on Aiden’s abdomen and he touched the back of her hand. Raising her head from behind his shoulder, she couldn’t see a reason for the hush that had fallen over the forest. The shadows seemed darker. The silent sway of the trees more ominous. The others were as expectant, tense and still as the woods themselves.

“What just happened? That bird—”

“Shh,” Aiden whispered. “It will be soon now. Save your questions for later.”

Her ears popped and everyone moved forward at once. Aiden led the way. She could feel the contraction of his thighs as he urged the horse onward, the minute adjustments in the muscles under her fingertips as his body absorbed the shock of each hoof beat. They weren’t moving fast, not through the brush. That warble sounded again, higher pitched this time, closer, and fear knotted her stomach. She wanted to go back home, to Aiden’s house, anywhere but deeper into these woods.

The crow sounded again loudly overhead and as if that were a signal, Aiden turned suddenly onto a wide footpath and kicked the horse faster. Some of the others carried torches but she still didn’t understand how they could see where they were going. She lifted her face from Aiden’s shoulder and then, suddenly, she understood.

Oh God.

No way could they miss their targets, not when they lit up the night like that. There had to be at least a dozen of the creatures. Aiden headed right for the center of the pack, big sword in one hand and a growl vibrating in his chest.

She must have made some noise—a squeak or a choked protest—but was surprised she couldn’t hear herself screaming.

“Grace,” he snapped. “Close your eyes if you need to but for God’s sake, hold on.”

It was hard. When he twisted his torso to swing his blade through the first demon, she had to move with him in order to keep her grip. Her hold kept slipping and she felt as if she was tugging him off balance. He had to survive or she was toast. She wrapped her fingers around his leather belt. He grunted, she assumed in approval, corrected the direction of the horse by shifting his weight and rode down another of those things. The demon planted its feet, facing them, lava blood throbbing beneath slick skin, eyes black as death. She couldn’t close her eyes even though everything inside her screamed at her to do it.

Instead, she forced herself to watch and focused on her job—holding on, clinging to the belt around Aiden’s waist and watching in sick fascination as their momentum drove his blade through the demon’s neck, cutting short that warbling howl. He didn’t even look back to make sure it was dead. She did, and it was, but the glimpse of its limp body, light dimming to a sullen orange glow, nearly cost her balance. Aiden changed direction abruptly, snapping her head around and loosening the grip of her left hand. He reached down to grab her wrist and she yelped in pain. He growled something under his breath and she latched onto his belt again. She watched as Christian cut down another demon. There were other things out there too. Animals as big as the fire demons but who seemed to be fighting on their side. Big vicious dogs who swarmed over the last demon standing and proceeded to tear it apart. She looked away.

The crow sounded again behind them and Aiden took off in that direction, racing into the dark woods, following the agitated cawing of that damned bird. They burst into a clearing, three demons directly in their path. He hauled back the reins at the same time the nearest one lunged at them. Aiden’s sword was in his opposite hand and he cursed as he tried to maneuver them around. Not fast enough. The crow swooped down, tearing a flap of skin from just above the demon’s eyes and it stumbled into the horse’s flank. The horse screamed and Grace did too. Aiden drove his sword into the demon’s eyes, tore the blade free in order to face the next monster before the dead one even hit the ground.

Blood spattered across her arm and she instinctively pulled back, rehooking her hand on Aiden’s belt right before he jerked forward. She waited for the pain to hit but it didn’t burn. She wanted the stuff off her, every trace of it gone, the memory of it erased from her brain. With the way the demons’ blood glowed, she’d thought for certain that it would be hot but instead it was cold as ice. She didn’t know why it threw her over the edge into hysteria, that splatter of blood on her arm, but she felt marked by it. So long as that coldness seeped down to her bones, she couldn’t deny this was really happening.

She buried her face against Aiden’s back and didn’t notice at first when he stopped until she heard Christian call out, “That’s the last of them then. I’m heading back.” A pause. “Do you need help with her?”

Aiden didn’t say anything but Christian laughed. “Fine…fine. I’ll see you in the morning.”

She heard the retreating hoof beats as Christian moved off, the crunch of dry leaves, and then nothing except for their own horse’s labored breathing and Aiden’s slowing heartbeat beneath her cheek. He was moving, doing something with his sword and then reaching forward to return it to the sheath strapped to the saddle. Her hands were still locked on his belt and she had to concentrate to force them open. A shudder ran through her and her breath came in sharp pants. Aiden sat with his head bowed. After a moment, he lifted her shaking hands from where they were wrapped around his waist and pressed them to his chest.

“You’re freezing. Was it the blood? It won’t hurt you, but I imagine you want it off.”

She nodded.

“Grace?” He sighed when she didn’t answer. “Are you all right? They’re gone. If you need a minute or two that’s fine. You just let me know when you’re ready and we’ll head home.”

She opened her eyes just as the fiery glow from the last monster faded completely. The woods seemed normal again. They were nearly to the lake and the light from the full moon hit a wavering path on the water. The bugs were back, a little bird or bat flitting above them in the trees. That sense of hushed anticipation was gone along with the strange pressure in her ears. It had been real though. Oh God, it had been real.

“Let’s go home,” she whispered, and Aiden took her there.