“I’m not really in a position to help you, Val,” I said, hoping I sounded calmer than I felt. “I’m at quite a disadvantage against Adam in hand-tohand combat. Your best bet is to tell him what he wants to know.”
She sobbed. “I don’t know anything! Please, Morgan—”
“You were on your way to report me as an illegal demon so I’d be executed, and now you’re asking for my help?”
Adam grinned at me. “I thought I was supposed to be the bad cop.”
“Shut up, Adam.”
He was still twirling the whip. He moved it closer to Val, so that the circling leather brushed her pants leg. She yelped and tried to jerk away, but of course she didn’t have anywhere to go.
“Val, please tell him what he wants to know. He…gets off on hurting people. Don’t give him an excuse.”
Adam raised his eyebrows at me, then glanced down pointedly at his crotch. I followed his gaze even though I didn’t want to. Apparently, he wasn’t enjoying himself at the moment. Of course, he hadn’t actually hurt her yet.
“I’d tell him if I knew anything!” Val said, sounding desperate.
“That would have sounded much more convincing before our little chat at lunch,” I said, and Val had no clever response.
“I suggest you back up a bit,” Adam said to me as he stopped his little twirling game. “I’m very good with this, but you’re still better off keeping your distance.”
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“Morgan!” Val screamed.
“Don’t do it, Adam. Please. Let’s just—”
He didn’t wait for me to finish. The whip sliced through the air. The crack was almost deafening in the closed room. Val’s scream tore at my conscience, but I honestly didn’t know how I could stop Adam unless I could talk him out of it.
An angry red welt rose on the skin of Val’s back. She sobbed, sucking in great gulps of air.
“That was a warning stroke,” Adam said. His voice was dead calm, no hint of emotion in it. “The next one draws blood. Tell me who your associates are, and there won’t be a next one.”
“Please,” she begged in a tear-ravaged voice. “Morgan, don’t let him do this to me.”
I should have been content to see Val in pain after what she’d done, but she’d been my best friend for too long. I couldn’t make myself stop caring about her, at least not this fast. My eyes pleaded with Adam to stop, or at least to slow down so I could think of some way out of this.
“If you’re too squeamish for this, love, then I suggest you leave. The unpleasant reality is that people are trying to kill you, and if we don’t find out who they are, they’ll eventually succeed. Considering the manner in which they plan to do it, I think a few lashes from a bullwhip are rather inconsequential.”
It was hard to argue his logic, though I wanted to. I decided perhaps I had a better chance of influencing Val than Adam.
“Val, please. I can’t stop him from hurting you. How much of this do you think you can stand before you break? Why put yourself through this?”
She didn’t answer me, but she looked at me through those tear-filled eyes, and there was a hardness in her expression that chilled me. I don’t know what she was about to say to me, because at that moment, the whip cracked again.
Another scream tore from Val’s throat. As Adam had threatened, this time he’d drawn blood. My gorge rose, and for a moment I felt sure I was going to be sick.
“I’m not playing with you anymore, Valerie,” Adam said. “Talk now, or you’ll regret it more than you can possibly imagine.”
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Adam. The whip flicked casually, almost playfully, in my direction. I jumped back with a little gasp, though he hadn’t come close to hitting me.
“I mean it, Morgan,” he said, his voice still calm and devoid of emotion.
“If you can’t take this, then get out. There’s more at stake here than just your life, remember. I’ll do whatever I have to do to break her.”
“Please, no more,” Val sobbed. “I’ll tell you what you want to know. Just…
don’t hurt me anymore.”
I hugged myself, wondering if Dominic hadn’t had the right idea all along. But no, if this was happening on my behalf, then it was my duty to bear witness, no matter how much I hated it.
“Who do you report to?” Adam asked.
“Andrew Kingsley,” she answered.
“No, you don’t,” Adam countered. “You just know we already suspect Andrew, so you’re throwing out a name you feel safe giving us. Try again.”
Val hiccupped. “I don’t know his name,” she said, and it was almost a wail. “I call him Orlando, but that’s a code name, not his real name.”
“Human or demon?”
“Human.”
“Describe him.”
She was still sniffling and hiccupping, so the description came in short little bursts. “About five-ten…two hundred pounds…blond hair, blue eyes. Looks like a good candidate for a host, but isn’t one.”
“And who else is in on this plan?”
“I don’t know. They make sure us small fry don’t know enough to give everything away. Andrew would know a lot more than I do.”
“Why, Val?” I asked. I knew there were more important questions, but my broken heart needed to know. “Why did you do this to me? Why did you let Andrew force this…thing…on me, and then try to—” My voice cut off, because I was going to start crying myself if I said another word.
“I’m really, really sorry, Morgan.” She looked at me over her shoulder, and her eyes were wide and oh-so sincere. “You weren’t supposed to be the host. Andrew acted on his own before we were ready. He has his own agenda, and it doesn’t always mesh with ours. I would never have let this happen to you if I’d known. I didn’t even know Andrew was one of us until after you showed me that note. When I reported it, he paid me a visit, and that’s how I found out. I’m just a foot soldier, not even close to a general.”
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I took a deep breath to steady my nerves. Not that they could possibly be too steady at a time like this. “So if you’d put Lugh into some other host and burned that host alive, it would have been all right?”
She raised her chin. “Sometimes you have to make sacrifices for the greater good.”
“I notice you didn’t volunteer to host Lugh for the weenie roast. What is it you’re sacrificing exactly?”
“Let’s talk about this greater good of yours,” Adam said. Val tensed. “Do you have any idea what it is you’re fighting for?”
“We’re fighting to preserve the natural order.” She sounded mighty proud of herself. “If Lugh becomes king of the demons, he’ll cut off contact between the Demon Realm and the Mortal Plain. We’d lose the demons, lose everything they do for us, all their good works.”
Adam snorted. “Do you actually believe that?” He looked at me. “Lugh wants to outlaw the possession of unwilling hosts. As of now, while it’s against human laws, it’s not against ours. Nice irony that they forced him into an unwilling host, don’t you think?”
I turned my gaze from Adam to Val, thinking she was about to refute what he’d said. She didn’t.
“If enough humans were willing to offer themselves, then demons wouldn’t need the unwilling!” Her eyes practically glowed with fervor.
“The human race needs them. They’re so much more powerful, so much wiser than we are.”
My mind couldn’t even encompass what Val was saying. I stood there like an idiot, unable to think of any reply.
Adam snorted. “Dougal has about as much respect for the human race as a human has for a horse. You would make your entire race into slaves?”
“We need guidance!” she answered. “We’re like children next to the demons. A child might be frightened of the dentist and unwilling to go, but a responsible parent doesn’t let the child make that kind of decision.”
Had Val always believed this bullshit? I mean, she was an exorcist, for crying out loud! True, she’d always been more pro-demon than any other exorcist I’d met, and exorcists only cast out the scum of demon society. But considering what she now admitted to condoning, I wondered just how many of the demons she’d “exorcized” were still hanging around the Mortal Plain. And I wondered how she’d been able to hide her true feelings 143 / 226
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from me so long. She was just another fanatic. Like my parents. Like my brother. It sickened and saddened me.
“You’re a deluded fool, Valerie,” Adam said. “What else can you tell us about your organization?”
She raised her chin. “I can tell you that we’ll win in the end. We’ll do whatever is necessary to stop your puny king from taking the throne and destroying centuries of accord between demons and humans.”
Adam shook his head in disgust. He coiled the whip and hung it from one of the pegs on the far wall.
Once again, my naiveté reared its ugly head. When he approached Val, I assumed he was going to unlock the handcuffs and let her loose. Before I had any inkling of what he was about to do, he’d placed his hands on both sides of Val’s head and twisted.
The sound was sickening. Val’s lifeless body collapsed to the floor, at least, as much as it could with her wrists still cuffed to the bed. My stomach rebelled, and I vomited, over and over until I had nothing left in me. My whole body was wracked with tremors. I didn’t look up when I saw Adam’s feet approach.
I’d always known Adam was a hard-ass. And, truth be told, I’d always been just a little afraid of him. But nothing could have prepared me for the shock of witnessing his transition from legal, law-abiding citizen to rogue demon under an automatic death sentence.
He left for a moment, then returned with a handful of towels, which he threw on the floor. He handed me a damp washcloth. I didn’t want to take anything from him, but I wanted to get my face clean, so I grabbed it. The washcloth felt cool against my blazing cheeks and forehead.
“I’m sorry, Morgan,” he said. “But it had to be done. If I’d let her go, she would have tried to have us both executed by the state. And she might have succeeded. Lugh is an illegal demon, and after kidnapping and assaulting Valerie, I’m now officially rogue.”
He moved away from me. I looked up and saw him finally unlock the handcuffs. When Val’s body slumped all the way to the floor, I thought I might have another round of dry heaves.
“How could you do that?” I whispered. “You just murdered her in cold blood.” My God, Adam was a cop! How could he just murder someone like that?
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He sighed. “I did what I had to do.”
I looked up at him. His face showed a hint of mild regret, but no more than that. I wondered how many people he’d killed before, because I couldn’t imagine him being this blasé about it if Val were his first.
“It doesn’t even bother you, does it?” I asked. Numbness crept through my limbs and mind. This couldn’t be real. I couldn’t have just stood by and watched while Adam killed someone.
No, not just someone. Val. The woman who’d been my best friend for a decade.
But also, the woman who’d planned to kill me.
Adam looked thoughtful. When he answered, it was clear that he chose his words carefully. “It bothers me that you had to see this on top of all the other shocks you’ve had lately. It doesn’t bother me that I killed her.”
I shook my head. “How could that not bother you?”
He left Val’s body lying on the floor and came to squat in front of me so he could meet my eyes.
“I’m not human, Morgan. Demons are very similar to humans, on so many levels that it’s sometimes hard for you to remember that we’re not. My host is unhappy with me for what I’ve done, but that’s a very human reaction. I did what I had to do. Demons don’t beat themselves up for doing what they think is right, even when they’ve had to do something distasteful.”
I shook my head, unable to absorb what he was saying.
“To put it into perspective—if for some unimaginable reason, I were put into a position where killing Dominic was the right thing to do, I’d do it.”
I gasped. I could actually feel the blood draining from my face. Adam hammered his point home.
“I’d do it, and I wouldn’t feel bad about it.” He frowned at my look of absolute horror. “I don’t mean I wouldn’t grieve. I mean I wouldn’t feel guilty. And that’s not because of who I am, but because of what I am. Our…
psychology, I guess you’d call it…is different from yours.”
I tasted bile on the back of my throat. “Get away from me.”
“Morgan—”
“Get the fuck away from me!” It came out almost a shriek. I wanted to have a fit of screaming hysterics, but I had to hold together just a little longer.
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Adam’s face hardened. “You can be as pissed at me as you want, but just ask yourself what you would have done differently.”
“I wouldn’t have killed her, you bastard!”
He stood up and moved away from me. “So you would have just let her go? You would have let her call the police and turn us both in?”
I was hugging myself, and my hand pressed against something hard in my jacket pocket. My heart almost stopped.
It was the Taser Dominic had given me. I’d had it all along, had had the means to stop Adam from torturing Val, had had the means to stop him from killing her. And I’d forgotten all about it. In hindsight, I can’t help wondering if my subconscious had agreed with Adam’s methods and made me forget I had the Taser. Maybe for all my righteous indignation, I’d wanted him to do those terrible things. If I hadn’t, wouldn’t I have realized that Adam couldn’t let Val go free?
Wouldn’t I have known what that had meant?
Wouldn’t I have stopped him?
In a moment of perfect clarity in the midst of a raging storm of emotions, I realized one thing: I couldn’t stay in the same house with Adam for another moment. He might be my only ally, but if today’s events proved anything, it was that sometimes you’re better off without allies. I knew Adam wouldn’t let me leave without a fight. If I gave him any clue what I was going to do, I’d find myself locked in the room next door. So while he was bending over Val’s body, I armed the Taser and shot him in the back.