The Demon Hunters (6 page)

A setup? Was somebody after us? Were
demons after us?

The last time that happened, I ended
up in Bel-Athaer being tortured by Royal’s brother. If Royal had
not turned up and rescued me, I’d likely be dead, and young
Lawrence also.

Were Gia Sabato and Daven
Clare working for demons, for Lawrence’s enemies? Were bad demons
after
me
again?

Royal and I escaped a tribe of demons
in Bel-Athaer. Although they started it when they abducted and
tortured me, I guess they hold us responsible for the death of
Royal’s brother. He couldn’t assure me they would not come after
us.

I roared up the street and in my
driveway, got out the car and slammed the door. I stomped to the
mailbox and fought with a big manila envelope the mailman had
jammed in there.

Banks & Mortensen,
1825 Beeches Street, Clarion, Utah, 84311.

Banks
and Mortensen. See who gets top billing?

A handwritten address, with no return
address. The postal stamp said Salt Lake City, but all mail to
Clarion goes through there.

I went inside, in the kitchen, dropped
the envelope on the table and went to the refrigerator. “I met Gia
Sabato today,” I announced to thin air.

Mel and Jack flashed into the
room.“The author, the one who writes about vampires?” Mel
asked.

“
The very same.” I opened
the fridge and got a diet cola. The fridge is old, one of those
bulbous fifties things and a lovely shade of pale pink. If you put
anything at the back it half-freezes up, so I keep the soda there.
It comes out icy and delicious. “She and a guy name of Daven Clare
are our new clients.”

“
You’re on a case for
them?” Jack asked.

I popped the tab and took a sip, then
said, “It’s what you usually do for clients. Gia’s coming here to
talk to me this evening.”

They reacted like a person
would when hit with mind-shattering news. They went perfectly
motionless, then their jaws dropped in unison. A second later Jack
managed to say in a voice hushed with awe: “She’s coming
into the house
?”

They were more taken aback by a person
coming in the house than that the person was a famous figure. I
took my can of soda to the table. “Yep.”

“
She’s gorgeous.” Jack ran
his hands over his hair. “How do I look?”

I eyed him. “Kinda . . . dead.
Fortunate for her, she can’t see you.”

“
Bummer.” He folded his
arms, slumping.

“
But what’s she
like
?” Mel
asked.

“
She’s scary as hell
and
not
human.”

Mel jerked into motion. “Of course
she’s human! We saw her photo in the paper.”

“
I’m positive she’s
not.”

“
Duh!” Mel put hands to
hips, elbows akimbo. “I get it. She’s a demon.”

“
I’m not sure.” I took a
seat at the table. “If she and Clare are demons, they’re like none
I’ve seen or heard of.”

Jack came in closer. “What do they
look like?”

“
She looks normal in her
photo,” Mel said.

“
They can perform miracles
with Photoshop,” from Jack.

“
They look human. But. . .
.” Confused again, I stopped talking.

“
If it looks like human,
walks like human and talks like human, generally it’s human,” Jack
opined.

“
It’s something. . . .” I
splayed my hand on my stomach. “This tells me they’re
not.”

“
Probably
indigestion.”

“
I wish,” I told
him.

My roommates are easily distracted.
“What’s that?” Jack asked as he bent over the tale for a closer
look at the package.

“
I don’t know.”

He turned to the TV set as Oprah came
on. “Who’s it from?”

I took another healthy gulp of soda.
“Don’t know that either. No return address.”

“
Probably a bomb from one
of the several hundred people you’ve pissed off.”

“
Or . . . what’s it called
. . . anthrax?” from Mel.

“
So, it’s from one of the
several hundred terrorists you’ve pissed off,” Jack
amended.

Where did they come up with these
ideas?

I sat at the table and ripped off the
end of the envelope. Jack and Mel in unison parodied gasps of
alarm.

I pulled out a slim
six-by-nine book with a soft, black leather cover. It looked old,
like a well-worn Bible, and on the front, in gold lettering
crackled by time,
Elizabeth
Hulme.

I flipped it open. “I think
it’s a diary.” I held it up for them to see the words in large,
ornate, tortured handwriting. “See, inside here it says,
I Continue My Observations During Our Expedition
of Discovery. Burma 1887. Elizabeth Hulme aged Fifteen Years and
Seven Months.”

“
How odd,” Mel said. “It
looks really old.”

“
Well it would be, if it
was written in 1887,” Jack commented dryly.

“
Why would anyone send you
an old diary?” Mel asked.

“
It came to the agency, not
me in particular.”

“
Anonymously too,” Jack put
in.

I widened my eyes at them, closed the
book and pushed it away.

“
Leave it open!” Mel
said.

I sighed. “I’m not in the mood to sit
here turning pages for you. Maybe later.”

I got up, went up the stairs and along
the passage to my bedroom. Before closing the door, I looked back.
“And stay out, will you, guys? I need some me-time.”

They were still in the kitchen, but I
knew they heard me.

***

I needed time alone to
think things through. I lay on my stomach on the bed, arms crossed
on the pillow and my head on them. Oprah’s voice echoed up the
stairs now and then, but apart from that, blessed quiet enfolded
me. The soft
tock
of the old carriage clock on the mantle calmed me.

I ran it through my head
again. Not the case, not the mystery of disappearing Rio Borrego.
Gia Sabato and Daven Clare, and Royal. All three knew something
they were not telling me, that Royal
refused
to tell me.

Royal was leery of them, but
determined to take the case. He acted like it was a done deal, with
no input from me.

I propped my elbows on the
pillow and rested my chin on them. Gia
did
influence me. I could see no
other explanation.

I went over everything said
by all parties, everything I observed, and I kept coming back to
the same question. Not who, but
what
were Gia Sabato and Daven Clare?
Demons making me think they were human, or human beings?

I flopped over on my back and stared
at the ceiling. They could be human with special powers - I
narrowed my eyes - powers of intimidation, for sure.

I rolled off the bed, sat at my
computer and Googled Gia Sabato.

I found a lot of entries on Gia
connected to her writing: reviews on her two books, an official Gia
Sabato web page and an official fan page. It went on and on. I kept
scrolling down until I got the occasional Antonio Sabato Junior
entry interspersed with hers, then entries on other Gias and other
Sabatos.

At last I found a little gem. Clicking
the link took me to a post in an urban fantasy forum.

“
Who is Gia Sabato? I
wonder if that’s the name she was born with. Sabato has a driver’s
license, passport, credit cards, social security number, so on and
so forth, but they date back just five year. Before then, nada. So
I can only conclude she legally changed her name, but there’s no
record.”

The post rambled on at some length. It
came from a Robert P. Bristow of Warrensburg, Missouri, dated a
month ago. Answering posts theorized, but most of their ideas were
ludicrous.

Still didn’t tell me anything about
the woman, but interesting nonetheless. If Gia Sabato sprang into
existence five years ago, who was she before? Getting a fake
identity was easy if you knew how.

One way to find out.

Royal installed some possibly illegal
software on my computer. Strike that - definitely illegal. I rarely
used them for fear the CIA or Homeland Security would come busting
in my house and haul me off. I decided to risk it if the snoop
programs could tell me anything about Gia Sabato.

I need not have bothered. They
confirmed what I read on Bristow’s blog. Gia Sabato’s social
security number showed up in the system five years ago, followed by
a driver’s license. Soon after, she opened accounts at two banks
and a credit union. She got a passport. Before that? As Robert
Bristow said: nada. Not even demon-tech could tell me.

In her publicity photos she
always stood in shadow and w
ore a long
hooded cloak or a wide-brimmed hat. She never gave interviews and
did book signings only late in the evenings. At those signings,
many of the fans who queued were young vampire wannabes, and others
wore costumes which made them look like extras for The Addams
Family. And Gia wore pale makeup on her face, black on her eyes,
bright red on her lips.

I shook my head as I looked
at the monitor. The woman had reinvented herself.
She adopted another persona as a publicity ploy: a
mysterious, eerily attractive author of vampire novels. And her
fans lapped it up.

How did she hide her origins so
thoroughly? What influence and power did she wield to be able to do
that? How do you suppress public records?

I leaned back in the chair. Or. . .
.

Did she come from Bel-Athaer and like
many Gelpha create the identity of a human being?

I looked for Daven and found a Daven
René Clare, born in Winterthur, Switzerland, in 1971. He had
addresses in Bennington, Vermont and Clarion, Utah.

Bella Vista Drive, up at the White
Basin Resort. Hm. I pinched my lower lip, thinking. Maybe I should
take a drive up there. And I could check out Gia’s place in Bayle
Court.

I rubbed my eyes with my fingertips. I
felt very, very tired; probably worn out emotionally more than
physically.

I picked up my bedside phone to call
Royal, put it down again. I’d call him later when I was in a better
mood.

I went back to the kitchen to make a
late lunch, pausing in the hallway to switch on the
air-conditioning so the temperature would be comfortable by the
time Gia Sabato arrived. The kitchen is my favorite room in cold
weather because it’s the warmest one in the house. In summer, with
sun blazing through the west-facing windows, it gets really, really
hot. Air conditioning was a deciding factor when I bought the
house. Back then, most homes in Utah used evaporative coolers,
commonly called swamp coolers because they shoot out moist air. I
hate the things. They are noisy, and don’t help much with the heat
when temperatures get above ninety degrees, plus they make the
house damp. I looked at five other homes, but this was the only one
with air-conditioning.

This was the only one with two dead
people already installed, but I didn’t know at the time.

How could I not know Jack and Mel
haunted my house? They didn’t show themselves, and maybe my senses
were not fully attuned back then, because I didn’t feel them like I
can feel a shade’s presence now. Yep, finding a couple of spooks in
my house a week after moving in was something of a
surprise.

Too bad if Gia objected to meeting
with me in my kitchen. Royal and I had an agency, but we didn’t
have an office. At one time I thought of doing a makeover on the
living room and use it as our office - I never use the dark little
room and the décor stinks - but I don’t have money to spare for
renovations. I changed my mind, anyway, deciding I didn’t
particularly want clients in my home. But I didn’t have a choice
with Gia Sabato, she didn’t give me one.

Mel and Jack watched me avidly as I
got out tuna, pickles, sweet relish and light mayonnaise. I drained
and flaked the tuna and mixed everything in a plastic bowl with
them hanging over my shoulder. If they could drool, my shoulders
would have been soggy. I slapped the mixture on a slice of bread,
added a leaf of lettuce, topped it with another slice and took the
sandwich to the table.

Mel and Jack ogled the sandwich, but I
was used to that. They don’t remember the taste of food, but act
like they do. I think they fixate on my enjoyment. If I want to
rile them I make a lot of appreciative noises when I eat, but this
time I ate silently. Then I picked up the diary again.

Half a sandwich in one hand, I scanned
through the first few pages. Elizabeth Hulme wrote a detailed
account of her journey. This did not seem to be the first volume,
but from a word here and there I figured out she went to what was
then Upper Burma, and part of British India, with her father,
archeologist Edward Hulme, his assistants, and an American student.
They disembarked their steamship in Yangon and headed up toward
Taunggyi. Elizabeth didn’t give any specific directions in her book
from then onward, but she spoke of mountainous terrain and dense
jungle vegetation.