The Demon You Know
Read The Demon You Know Online
Authors: Christine Warren
The Demon You Know
The Others Book 3by Christine Warren
To my best girlfriends.
Delicate flowers, each and every one.
Contents
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PROLOGUE
The demon called Rule shifted restlessly in the plush leather club chair in the library of Vircolac
and struggled not to look as impatient as he felt. Judging by the grin on Rafael De Santos's face, he was
failing miserably.
"Believe me," the Felix said, swirling a brandy snifter in one elegant hand, "it's not that I don't sympathize with your predicament. I do. Completely. It's just that after the past six weeks it is so refreshing to be listening to someone
else's
problems for a change.”
"Your problems were of your own making. Had you truly wished to remain hidden from the humans, I am sure you could have found a way.”
Rule knew the accusation was unfair, but he wasn't in the mood to play fair. He wasn't in the mood to play at all. Not after relating the story he'd just spent the better part of an hour telling to his host in the mortal world.
It was one thing to fight a war when your focus was on surviving from day to day, on doing what had to be done. It was quite another to hear yourself explain it to an outsider in all its hideousness. And Rule hadn't been feeling exactly chipper to begin with.
He'd just spent close to a year tracking down a reliable informant to keep him apprised of theactivities of the fiend Uzkiel. Five days ago, the informant had disappeared along with Rule's best chanceof discovering exactly how said fiend planned to launch a full-scale war against the rest of the Below andthe Watch, the demon police force that kept its kind in check. Rule felt entitled to his bad attitude.
De Santos shook his head. "I wish it had been that simple. But progress is unavoidable, myfriend. Especially the kind we most wish to avoid.”
"How comforting you are," Rule muttered.
"Ah, but you didn't come here for comfort, did you?" As head of the Council of Others, De Santos had a special talent for perception. Or maybe he had risen to head of the Council because of thatperception. Either way, it was a quality Rule recognized and grudgingly respected. "We have not seen
you Above in the past year, in spite of our reassurances that you would always be welcome among us.
Your assistance in the matter of Dionnu and his minions will not be forgotten anytime soon.”
Rule shrugged off the thanks. He hadn't helped defeat the Faerie king out of the goodness of his
heart, so he didn't need praise for it. It had been just another part of his job. "I have been busy with my own concerns Below. You and the Lupines seemed to have your situation well in hand.”
"So, what is it that has finally brought you back to us?”
Draining his own brandy without so much as a blink, Rule debated for a moment how best to tell the other man his news without causing undue alarm. Too bad there wasn't such a way.
"I... seem to be missing a fiend.”
Unlike many Others, who tended to be a temperamental lot—shape-shifters especially—De Santos had earned a reputation during his life for his eerie calm in even the most stressful situations. For
that reason, he didn't leap to his feet and shout his demand for an explanation, as much as Rule guessed he must be wanting to. Instead, he carefully crossed one ankle over the opposite knee and raised a dark eyebrow. "I beg your pardon?”
The steel beneath the polite question made it impossible for Rule to mistake that calm for disinterest. The Felix was not happy with this news. Rule had not expected him to be. The last time fiends had been set loose in Manhattan, people had died, humans and Others alike. It had not made the head of the Council a happy werejaguar.
"Not one you need to be terribly concerned with," Rule clarified before he had another battle on his hands. "It is a minor fiend with few powers and fewer brain cells. Not terribly evil and not terribly ambitious. It only concerns me because I have been using it to gather information on the activities of the fiends I
am
worried about. We have reason to believe a sect of fiends may be planning some kind of
attack on Infernium, so I can't afford to lose the information this small fiend has been able to supply me.”
De Santos looked only vaguely reassured, not that he likely cared all that much whether the
largest of the cities Below stood or fell. "And you think that this fiend might have come up Above? I thought you were going to make sure that didn't happen after the last time.”
The demon gave his host a bland stare. "And how easy do you find it securing your own borders? Mundane or magical.”
"Point taken. Still, I'm not sure how much I'll be able to help you in locating this fiend. Manhattan
is a large place, figuratively speaking, and if the creature has a brain in its head, I would think it would be keeping a low profile and staying out of places where it might run into one of my people.”
"Like I said, it is not very smart.”