The Demon Hunters (21 page)

She shredded apart, and was
gone.

I found myself in Royal’s arms again,
my breath panting out in tiny gasps. “What do you see,
Tiff?”

“
Horrible. It was
horrible.” I shuddered as I lifted my head from his shoulder.
“She’s gone. She just came apart.”

Blinding anger overwhelmed the
distress of what I’d seen. I tore free of his arms and turned to
face the others, and spoke with a threat in my voice I knew I
couldn’t back up. “You bastards! You fucking bastards! You killed
her! I should see you all in hell!”

“
She was a suffering husk,”
Daven said from behind me.

“
She was a beautiful
woman!” I wailed, tears welling in my eyes. I swiped at them with
my sleeve. “And you did nothing to help her. Nothing at
all!”

A tall demon with hair and eyes the
color of old, tarnished silver stepped toward me. “You saw her. You
actually saw her.”

Someone suddenly grabbed me by the
arms and spun me. Gia’s black eyes bore into mine. “Did she say
anything?”

I stared at her stonily. “She asked
for forgiveness. She said she betrayed them. And she said. . .
.”

Shit!
Why didn’t I see it before?
“You said
the killer is targeting Gelpha.”

Gia glanced to the side at Daven. “And
our people.”

“
Then the Charbroiler must
be able to distinguish them from humans. Which means either the
Charbroiler is one of you, or - ”

“
We thought of that,” Gia
said.

“
Or,” I went on, “one of
your people is identifying the victims. Maud said ‘I betrayed
them.’”

Gia released me. “If Maud betrayed us,
if she worked for the Charbroiler, why did he try to kill
her?”

“
No idea.”

I stepped back from her and looked
toward the window. I didn’t want to look at them, at any of
them.

Royal tentatively put his arm around
my shoulders. I walked from beneath it and a few paces away from
him.

“
Then it is over,” the
silver demon said.

“
I pray so,” Daven told
him, “because one of our people was slain this morning.”

I looked at the still shape beneath
the sheet. Was it over? How many did Maud identify before someone
killed her?

I couldn’t take any more. I walked out
the room and out the house. I’m glad nobody tried to stop me,
because I would have resisted. I didn’t care how powerful they
were, if they tried to take me back in there, I would go down
fighting.

Chapter
Seventeen

Royal came out the cottage first,
looking around till he saw me already in the back seat of the cab.
Gia came after him, then Daven. I thought of being squished in with
Royal and Daven and wished I’d taken the front seat.

I wished I were back home, turning
pages of the newspaper for Jack and Mel, or sitting out in the
backyard under an apple tree with a glass of iced tea and a good
book. I wished I hadn’t quit my job with Clarion PD and opened the
agency with Royal. I wished I’d never seen a demon or talked to a
dead person.

I wished I were anyplace else than the
back of the old cab.

He’s not
human
, I told myself.
He doesn’t think like we do. But he shares our emotions,
doesn’t he? Does he not see the barbarity in what they did to Maud?
We would have done our damnedest to keep her alive.

But what would that have
meant for Maud? Years of surgery, years of pain - her life would
have been hell. It wouldn’t have been a life. As badly as she was
burned, how could she function in any way approaching
normal?

What was that movie I saw
years ago, where Native American Indians left their elderly to die
during a hard winter? They sacrificed them so the rest of the tribe
had a chance. And those old people understood, they settled down to
die, knowing their death meant something.

I tried to justify what they did to
Maud. I tried telling myself that, like the American Indians in
that old movie, they did it for the benefit of the tribe. But they
deliberately murdered the woman. They waited till I arrived and cut
off her head.

Royal was an accomplice to
murder.

I thought of the Labiosa family, what
I did for them, and what they did to their granddaughter’s killer.
But the memory didn’t readjust my thinking, make me agree with what
the demons did to Maud. I wasn’t there when Senora Labiosa pulled
the trigger, I didn’t take part. And only an idiot would endanger
their life by telling Clarion PD. Right?

I couldn’t get over what
they did to Maud, killing her so I could talk to her shade. And
they did it not knowing if she
would
remain as a shade, if I’d be
able to communicate with her.

I almost yelled out loud when Royal
jerked open the cab door, took hold of my upper arm and slid me out
the back seat. Daven was paying off the driver with another wad of
paper money.

“
What are you doing?” I
asked Royal with alarm in my voice.

“
We’re not taking the cab,
Tiff. Come on.”

I twisted out of his grasp and started
walking. I didn’t know where I was going, except away from the
cottage. He was at my side in a shot. I kept walking and he kept up
with me. He tried to take my arm again and I gave him a look. I
wasn’t ready for the demon dash yet.

“
It takes too long,” he
explained.

“
Then why use a cab in the
first place? Why not take the directions out the cabby’s head?” I
asked as the notion occurred to me. I knew Gia and Daven could do
that.

“
Precisely what Gia and
Daven wanted to do, but I thought you needed a break.”

“
Gee, thanks. You
considerately let me be
driven
to Maud’s murder.”

His eyes went a shade darker, got a
stony look, and I knew I’d hurt him. I didn’t care.

He got in front of me and walked
backward. He sounded weary. “Tiff, either come with me, or with
them.”

He stopped walking and I almost
barreled into him. He gave me no choice. I was not about to let Gia
or Daven put their hands on me. I nodded. Royal clamped his arm
around my shoulders.

You can’t think properly when you’re
moving so fast. Your thoughts just scatter. That was good, because
I didn’t want to think anymore. My head hurt with thinking and my
heart hurt from what I saw in the cottage. I couldn’t believe Royal
took me there, knowing what would happen. I couldn’t believe he was
part of a deliberate murder. Nothing he could say would change how
I felt. He wasn’t any Gerarco Labiosa.

I wasn’t sure what he was, not
anymore.

We stopped across from the same old
gray building and Royal guided me through a doorway behind us,
which led inside a small shop with dirty glass windows.

He let go my arm and nodded at a wood
door in the back wall. “We have to visit Lawrence on the way
back.”

First I heard of
it.
My voice came out sullen.
“Why?”

Royal jogged his head in Daven’s
direction. “I told the High House I wanted to take them through
Bel-Athaer. Lawrence wants to meet them.”

I didn’t really know young Lawrence. I
met him one time when Royal and I found him in Gorge’s shop. Having
to detour to see him made me nervous. I’d rather forget my one
experience in Bel-Athaer eight months beforehand. I nearly lost my
life down there. Or up there. Or across there. Or wherever it
is.

Royal moved ahead of me and opened the
door, and stood aside to let me pass. I pulled in a deep breath and
stepped through, and we were someplace else, a small bare cube of a
room with the entrance to a passageway ahead. I looked back just
before we went on and didn’t see any windows behind us, or a door
leading to the street, just gray concrete walls. Royal took my hand
but I pulled free and paced ahead of him. If we had to do this, I’d
as soon get it over with.

This time, instead of shooting along
at the speed of light, we just walked briskly along the corridor.
Low illumination bathed it, seeming to come from the beige ceramic
tiles which lined walls, ceiling and floor. I don’t think Royal saw
my chest heave as I remembered walking a passage lined with glowing
cobalt-blue tiles beneath House Morté Tescién, his ancestral home.
Everything about that place was a bad memory.

Five minutes later we went through
another doorway and ended up outside.

I barely had time to absorb our
surroundings before Royal grabbed my hand and we picked up speed,
but I did see grass, trees and shrubbery which looked no different
from in the good old U. S. of A. The air tasted clean and pure,
with no taint of gasoline or diesel. Pale wispy clouds scudded
quickly across a pale-blue sky as if propelled by a wind I didn’t
feel.

We did not move at full
demon speed, but we went at quite a clip as we plunged madly down
the side of a grassy hill, a dense forest to our left, and on our
right the land rose in gentle mounds. Ahead of us sat
the
biggest building I
have ever seen. Think the Whitehouse times three. It looked sort of
like the Whitehouse too, except it had three massive columned
porches with a rotunda between each. I couldn’t see much of the
rest, owing to the trees in front, but the white bits showing
between the trees . . . well, it seemed to go on forever,
stretching clear across the horizon.

No roads or paths led up to the huge
structure, no gardens fronted it.

“
Couldn’t we have beamed
right in there?” I asked, panting.

“
It is the ruling seat of
the High Lord. No person can
beam
directly inside,” Royal replied.

He made to pick me up and I wagged a
warning finger at him. “I am going to walk in there, not be carried
in like a side of meat.”

He slowed, and I took a moment to bend
over, hands braced on knees, and get my breath. We were near enough
I could see a path around the circumference of the building, not a
road, but a wide dirt path possibly created by moderate foot
traffic.

A few minutes later we stopped at the
bottom of smooth white steps leading to the porch and wide doors of
pale burnished wood. My gaze went up the length of the man who
stood there. At a guess almost seven-foot, he was the tallest and
oldest demon I had yet seen, with long hair of iron-gray streaked
with blue loosely pulled back in a tail. I thought the gray came
with age, because his eyes were the same blue shade as the streaks
in his hair, and as we got closer I saw lines radiating out from
them. Smaller lines arced his mouth and fine lines wrinkled the
skin of his cheeks. He was all the more imposing for those
indications of age. He awaited us, stiff and upright in his baggy
blue pants and multicolored, embroidered jacket, the cuffs and
collar of a snowy-white shirt peeking out.

He bowed at the waist as we took the
last two shallow steps up to the porch. Gia and Daven eyed him in
what I perceived as a superior manner. As if he didn’t notice them,
the man stared over their heads.

Royal nodded. “Gareth.”

Gareth smiled and beckoned with one
hand. “Come. He’s in the practice yard and I am to take you
directly to him.”

He led us inside a huge, gleaming
white hall flanked by staircases which curved up to the next floor.
There were no banisters and the steps looked like white marble,
same as the floor. Demons filled the space, demons with hair and
eyes of every imaginable color. They glittered: hair, eyes and
jewels. Some men and women wore medieval-style costumes of tight
hose and long-sleeved shirts, or tunics over their bare chests.
Sight of them brought on another shiver - Royal’s brother and his
cadre favored those costumes. Others wore flowing gowns which swept
the floor, all in swirling jewel-tone colors, and some heavily
embroidered. And, yes, some of the women wore tunics over their
bare breasts. But most of the demons had on modern American dress,
both casual and formal. A few wore what looked like European and
Asian costume. However, they appeared fond of sparkly accessories,
because even those wearing formal tux were smothered in
jewels.

“
Do all of them live
here?”

Gareth answered me. “Some are members
of the Court and reside here for half the year. Others are come to
pay their respects to Lord Lawrence.”

Everyone stared at us. I heard hisses
of indrawn breath and muttering. They slowly gathered around
us.

“
They come at the Lord’s
invitation,” Gareth said in a clear, carrying voice.

I realized the demons’ unfriendly
looks were for Gia and Daven, not me and Royal. They seemed angry,
their faces glowering. Whatever our clients were, they were not
popular.

Then Gia and Daven, who until then
waited with an air of detachment, looking toward the back of the
room as if oblivious of the unhappy demons around us, joined hands
and stepped forward so they stood in front of me, Royal and Gareth.
Their gazes slowly, very slowly, roamed over the crowd, their
expressions cold, like statues carved of pale marble.