Vengeance of the Demon: Demon Novels, Book Seven (Kara Gillian 7) (11 page)

The instant I made it into my car I hit the speed dial on my phone for Bryce, then backed out of the driveway as it rang. The sheer number of emotions tumbling through me could have filled the Superdome, but the two front runners were confusion and disbelief with anger a close third.

“Taggart here.”

“Put it on speaker.” Stress clipped my words. “Idris needs to hear this.”

“Done. Go ahead.”

I kept an eye on Tessa’s house in my rearview mirror as I drove down the street. “Tessa texted me to come over because she was back in town, and when I got there Katashi was drinking a fucking cup of tea in her kitchen. He’s there now.”

Idris let out an explosive curse. “We’re over half an hour away. Out by the parish line. Can you stick close and stake it out?”

“Already on it.” I whipped a U-turn less than a block away and tucked my car behind a parked minivan where I had a good line of sight on the house. And none too soon. Tessa and Katashi stepped out as a bullet-grey sedan glided into the driveway. “Shit. Shit. Shit. A car just pulled up. They’re leaving.” A man I didn’t recognize jumped out of the driver’s seat and hurried to open the back door for them.

“You have to follow!” Idris shouted.

“Only if you think it’s safe,” Bryce cautioned. “For you
and
for your aunt.”

“I’m pretty sure my aunt’s in no danger,” I said bitterly. Or was she? Katashi wouldn’t let affection stop him from using her as a hostage if he felt the need. I seethed, watching helplessly as she and Katashi settled into the back of the sedan. The driver hopped in then pulled out and headed away from where I was parked.

“All right, I’m following,” I said. “Eilahn’s behind me. The driver must’ve been waiting right around the corner.” I gritted my teeth as I navigated the construction zone and barely avoided losing them in the crush.

“Be careful,” Bryce said. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you to stay out of sight, but stay out of sight.”

“Yeah, thanks for the advice.” The instant the words left my mouth one of the cars between mine and the grey sedan changed lanes, forcing me to drop back and do the same or risk ending up too close. “Looks like they’re heading out of town. With any luck I can tail them long enough to narrow down where Katashi is based.”

“We’re on our way back to Beaulac,” Bryce said. “If they try to force a confrontation, get the hell out of there. Got it?”

“I will, I promise.” I was pissed and worried, but I wasn’t stupid. Or at least not
that
stupid. I continued to give terse updates as I maintained the pursuit, though my worry changed to bafflement after the sedan made a turn that took it through a residential area. “Not heading out of town after all,” I said. “I can’t figure out where the hell they’re going. They’re not trying to shake me, that’s for sure.” I hung back as the sedan stopped at a corner before turning. “They seem to be driving around randomly. Could they be tracking some sort of arcane signature?”
Or, they know I’m following them,
I thought with a wince.

“It’s possible,” Idris said uncertainly though no less tense. “Try to keep track of your route so we can see if there’s a pattern.”

My phone beeped with an incoming call and
Cory Crawford
on the caller ID. “Hang tight, my former sergeant is calling. I should take this.” I stuck them on hold without waiting for an answer and accepted Cory’s call. “Whatcha need, Sarge?”

“Hey, Kara, I got two people dressed as surveyors over here,” he said. “They have the equipment, but they’re not using it. They’re camped out on that asphalt patch in the parking lot. I’m sending you a pic.”

“Shit!” I took a hard right into a driveway and slammed to a stop then pulled up the picture. “The red-haired woman goes by Gina Hallsworth, though no guarantee that’s her real name. I don’t recognize the man with her, but I’m willing to bet he’s armed. Gina might be too, for all I know.” Katashi and Tessa weren’t driving around to track arcane crap. They were leading me on a wild goose chase to keep me fucking
distracted
.

“Son of a bitch,” he breathed. “You want them off the parking lot, I take it?”

“Not if you risk getting hurt.”

He let out a disparaging grunt. “Gimme a fucking break. I’m a cop, remember?”

“I vaguely remember that,” I said, smiling despite everything.

“I think I miss your sweet charm the most,” he said. “Anyway, I’m on it. I’ll let you know what happens.”

I switched back over to the boys and filled them in.

“We’ll meet you there,” Bryce said, then hung up.

 • • • 

When I arrived at the PD, there was no sign of surveyors, fake or otherwise, though I saw that orange cones and caution tape now cordoned off the valve. On the far side of the lot Cory leaned against his personal vehicle, an old but lovely Chevy Nova with a giant antenna on the trunk. I parked and did a quick in-passing assessment of the valve as I headed his way.

He lifted his chin toward the cones. “I asked them why they hadn’t posted an SG-243 placard by the work site,” he told me. “They said they’d go get it and skedaddled.”

“I doubt they wanted to get into a confrontation in a police station parking lot,” I said. “And what on earth is an SG-243 placard?”

Cory shrugged. “Some shit I made up. You don’t make sergeant without serious bullshitting chops.”

“Niiiice.” I grinned. “I also like how you’ve found the farthest possible place away from that asphalt patch, short of leaving the lot.”

“You think I didn’t consider doing just that?” he said. “I’m heading out of town right after work and didn’t want to risk that Bertha might get sucked into a black hole or eaten by a dragon or whatever the fuck else might happen.”

I gave him a blank look. “Who’s Bertha?”

He patted the trunk of the car. “This is Bertha. 1976 Chevy Nova. V-8 engine. Sucks enough gas to make a tree-hugger cry, but I’ve had her since college.”

“Uh huh. Why do you have ‘kasoxe’ on the license plate?”

Cory grinned. “K-A-5-O-X-E. I’m a ham radio operator. That’s my call sign.”

That explained the big horking antenna, and the arrival of Bryce and Idris cut short any further discussion. I introduced Bryce and Cory, but Idris veered straight to the valve, dropped into a crouch, and unslung his messenger bag from his shoulder.

Oh, fucking shit
, I thought in sudden panic,
please don’t pull Katashi’s arm out in the middle of the PD parking lot!
To my undying relief Idris simply removed a notepad and pen, and proceeded to scribble notes while he muttered under his breath.

“He’ll be like that for a while,” I told Cory with a wince of apology.

Cory let out a resigned sigh. “I’ll tell people he’s an asphalt inspector.”

Sure beat the hell out of the truth.

As soon as we made it home, Eilahn set to work adjusting the warding to respond to Tessa as an enemy. Ugh. I grabbed my laptop, flopped onto the sofa, and pulled up all the photos I had of Katashi and his people. After reviewing them for anything odd—such as a demon in the background—I emailed them to Cory as persons of interest along with a request to notify me if any of them showed up on his radar.

My phone buzzed beside me right after I hit send, with Sonny’s name on the display.
Please let this be good news about Zack
, I prayed as I picked it up.
And if not that, I’ll settle for boring requests like a sudden need for toothpaste or toilet paper.
“Hey, Sonny.”

“Got trouble,” he said in a strained whisper against raised voices in the background. “Ryan is here arguing with Zack. I think he’s trying to take him away.”

I shoved the laptop aside and shot to my feet. “Arguing about what? Where does he want to take him?”

“I don’t know!” he said. “They’re not speaking English.”

“Crap. I’m on my way. Do whatever you can to stall them!”

Szerain’s voice. Closer. Commanding. “Sonny. Put down the phone.”

“Let me talk to Ryan!” I shouted. The phone clunked. “Ryan! Szerain! Dammit. Talk to me!”

Son of a bitch. Szerain was doing a top-notch job of maintaining his position as Gigantic Fucking Loose Cannon. Holding my breath, I listened. Scuffling and a heavy thump. Szerain speaking in demon. Zack replying in kind. The rustle of the phone being picked up. Szerain speaking again in the background, my name followed by more demon. More jostling of the phone.

“Kara.” It was Zack, voice hoarse and stressed.

“Zack? Are you okay? What’s going on?”

He drew a shaky breath. “Leaving for a while.”

“Where to?” I jammed a hand through my hair in frustration. “For how long?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.” He paused as Szerain spoke, clipped and urgent. “Out of time,” Zack continued. “I have to go. He’s taking Sonny as well. I’m sorry.”

“No no no, Zack!” I paced frantically in the living room while I tried to think of a way to intervene. “Don’t let him do this to you. He’s too unpredictable right now. Please, think of Jill. Think of the baby.”

“He is.” Szerain’s voice on the line now, clear and uncompromising. I stopped pacing, hand tight on my phone. “Keep your focus on Katashi,” he continued. “Do
not
seek us.” His voice held a lord’s strength, but behind it I felt the fear—a visceral terror I recognized from when he faced re-submersion in his nightmarish prison. Loose cannon? No, he was a loose high-yield nuke who would go to
any
length to remain free.

“If you hurt Zack,” I said, voice shaking, “I swear, demonic lord or not, I’ll—” The connection went dead. I let out a scream of frustration then derailed the urge to smash the phone against the wall by hurling a sofa pillow instead. Breathing hard, I struggled to find a glimmer of hope in the madness. Zack had saved Szerain from insanity during his imprisonment. That had to count for something, right?

Sure, with humans. But I wasn’t dealing with humans. Zack and Sonny were gone, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. On top of that, Pellini was coming over in a few hours. How on earth was I supposed to pretend to be sociable, with Tessa off with Katashi, and Zack and Ryan who knew where?

I threw the pillow against the wall a few more times, then dropped down in front of the TV and hauled out the game controller. Half an hour of blowing aliens to green bits improved my mood somewhat. As I put the game away the gate panel chimed, signaling the arrival of Bryce and Idris.

A couple of minutes later the guys came in, both heavily laden with grocery bags. “We hit the store for barbecue supplies after we left the PD,” Bryce said as the two dropped the bags onto the kitchen table.

I joined them in the kitchen. “Damn glad you did,” I replied, wincing. “This has been such a crazy day I totally forgot. So, is the PD valve all right?”

“It’s stable except for a few minor irregularities,” Idris said as he stuck packages of ribs, hamburger meat, and hot dogs into the refrigerator. “Hallsworth was most likely evaluating a recent emission. I’ll recheck that valve right before its next emission in five days.”

I sorted out immediate barbecue needs from general groceries. “Nice to have a little breathing room. Did you make it to any of the other valves before I called you?”

“A couple,” he said. He tossed a head of lettuce to Bryce who caught it one-handed and set it on the counter. “No problem with the swamp valve out by the Alligator Museum,” Idris continued. “Stable and quiet. But the valve node in the river was wonky as hell. I’ll have to go back and do another round on it.”

“
In
the river?” I asked then rescued a bag of tomatoes from the game of catch. “How’d you manage to deal with it?”

Bryce snorted. “It wasn’t easy,” he said. “I had him dangling by a rope from the bridge. We were lucky no cops drove by.”

The mental image had me grinning. “That would’ve been fun to explain,” I said. “Wouldn’t a boat have been smarter—I mean, easier?”

“Both.” Bryce chuckled. “Time constraints. When we go out there again, we’ll rent one.”

“Smart man,” I said. “Which river?”

“Kreeger.”

“The bridge out by the parish line?”

“That’s the one.”

I let out a low whistle. “I never knew that was a node. But it saved my ass.” At Bryce’s blank look, I continued. “Last year a perp ran my car off that bridge and into the river. I’d have drowned if I hadn’t tapped in to some wild nature potency and busted out of the car.” I shook my head. “I’d never felt anything like that before. I wonder if bleed-through grove potency made it possible?”

Idris glanced back at me. “That’s actually a sound theory. The groves are the trunk focal point of the valve system in each realm.”

“Now that’s damn cool information.” I shoved veggies into the fridge and closed the door. “On a less cheery note, Sonny called half an hour ago. Szerain showed up at the house and pretty much kidnapped him and Zack.” I filled them in on the rest of the sketchy information. “No idea where they went.”

Idris muttered a long string of expletives. Bryce leaned against the counter and folded his arms across his chest. “He’d better not screw with Sonny.”

“I’m with you on that,” I said. “Maybe Sonny’s talent for keeping people calm will work on Szerain.”

“It grew stronger over the years,” Bryce said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it worked on a demonic lord. Farouche had a lot of faults, but his talent for enhancing skills wasn’t one of them.”

“No,” Idris said. “That wasn’t Farouche’s talent. Angus McDunn’s the enhancer.”

I stared, as dumbfounded as if he’d said guns fire sausages instead of bullets. Idris had spent time with Farouche’s people, so I had no reason to doubt him. “Wonderful. That’s just what we need—Katashi and all his asshole minions getting a talent upgrade.”

Bryce pushed off the counter. “Too late to stop it now. I’ll get the marinade going.”

Right. Time to deal with issues we could handle. “Do that,” I said. “Then we can discuss our strategy for this evening.”

 • • • 

After a short meeting with the boys to hammer out a plan for how to assess Pellini, I headed to the basement to prepare a summoning. Of the twelve varieties of “summonable” demons, I only knew of two—
kehza
and
nyssor
—that could detect innate summoner ability in a human. Kehza were man-sized and winged, with a plethora of claws and teeth and a head that resembled a Chinese dragon’s. Nyssor resembled angelic human children except for their too-large eyes with slitted pupils and a mouth bristling with pointed teeth. Either would do a bang-up job of telling us what we needed to know. However, the nyssor creeped me the hell out, which meant I’d be summoning a kehza, thank-you-very-much.

Of course, the other option was to throw Fuzzykins at Pellini since she didn’t like summoners one bit. Unfortunately, that method—while entertaining—wasn’t fully proven, and we needed to be sure. Then again, if Pellini did anything to annoy me, I could throw the cat at him anyway.

I retrieved my box of implements, set it on the table and removed my chalk and knife. My phone buzzed the moment I unsheathed the knife. Sighing, I peered at the number. I didn’t recognize it, but that didn’t always spell bad news. Right? A total stranger might call to tell me I’d won the lottery or inherited money from a heretofore unknown relative.

Yeah, because I was oh-so-lucky like that. Ha.

I set the knife down and scooped up the phone, then yelped as excruciating pain shot through my hand. Hissing curses, I peered at the source of the agony: a splinter the size of a telephone pole lodged beneath the nail of my middle finger.

The stupid phone continued to buzz, not giving a shit about my dire straits. I thumbed the answer button. “Kara Gillian.”

“Ms. Gillian, this is Detective Rob O’Connor with the St. Long Sheriff’s Office.” His voice sounded light, congenial. Didn’t matter. I recognized the threat. The splinter receded in importance. “I was wondering if you might be able to spare some time tomorrow morning to come to my office?” he went on. “Or, if it’s more convenient, I can meet with you at your residence.”

I forced my face into a smile. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t see me. Smiling helped me
sound
friendly. I knew O’Connor used the same trick. “I’m sorry, can you tell me what this is in reference to? If it’s one of my previous cases I’ll need time to get my files.”

“It’s not related to the any of your cases, ma’am,” he said. “It has to do with the events at the Farouche Plantation.”

Shit. Fuck. Damn.
My heart thudded as adrenaline dumped into my system. Didn’t matter that I’d known this was coming. “You mean the fire?” I asked in my best innocent and bewildered voice. “I’m not sure how I can be of any help. I’m not part of the FBI’s investigation.”

“Ma’am, this isn’t in reference to your role as a consultant.” It sounded as if his forced smile was starting to hurt his face. “I’m simply trying to clear up a bit of confusion. A couple of witnesses reported seeing a woman matching your description at the plantation during the time in question. If you’d come down to the station and give a statement concerning your whereabouts and activities for that day, we can get this whole mess settled.”

“Is that so?” I kept my voice calm. I wasn’t smiling anymore. No need to make
my
face ache. “All you want to do is talk to me? Clear up any confusion and get this silly mess sorted out before it gets ugly?” Right. Get me to come in and give a statement, answer a few questions—with no need for an attorney since it was all so friendly and casual-like. And hope I’d cough up conflicting or incriminating information they could later use to pressure me.

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied. “I know you want nothing more than to put all this behind you.”

My finger throbbed around the splinter, and I used the pain to focus my thoughts. I rolled my neck on my shoulders, felt a few vertebrae crack. “Well, Detective O’Connor. Since you’re asking me to come in as opposed to showing up at my doorstep with a warrant, I’m going to assume you don’t have anything resembling probable cause. That means you’re a thorough investigator who’s trying to shake something loose, and I respect that.” With my uninjured hand I gripped the hilt of the knife, gouged its point into the cracked wood of the tabletop and twisted. “However, I think I can save us both a lot of time and trouble,” I continued. “If I come down there tomorrow, I’m going to drink your terrible coffee and engage in stupid small talk. After that, I won’t say a single word in reference to anything that may or may not be related to the Farouche Plantation incident. I won’t give you a statement, and I won’t answer any questions. Not one. And before you try and give me the saw about ‘if you have nothing to hide,’ please remember that I’m former law enforcement, and I know how this all works.” I wrenched the knife, and a sliver of wood gave way with a sharp crack. “I don’t care if I’m accused of stealing a gumdrop or of killing the president with a velociraptor, I’m going to invoke my right to remain silent because that
is
my right. I’m also going to invoke my right to not waste my time and my gas coming to your office for no good reason.”

I heard him sigh. Poor guy. I’d frustrated him.

“Yes, ma’am, that is indeed your right,” he said, nice and calm. “Sorry to have troubled you.”

“No hard feelings,” I said. “I know you’d do the same if our roles were reversed.”

“Yes, ma’am. You have a good evening.”

“You too, detective.”

Exhaling, I disconnected. The simmering worry over the blurry photograph congealed into a thick dread that settled deep within my chest. Everything had consequences. I knew that. But damn, the timing of this one sure sucked ass.

I dropped the phone onto the table then used the tip of the knife to pry the splinter from beneath my fingernail. New pain lanced through my hand, but it soon faded to a dull ache. Too bad I couldn’t excise my worry with equal ease.

Surgery accomplished, I set the knife down and scowled at the table, even though I knew it didn’t deserve my ire. I’d been meaning to sand it down for ages and hadn’t. Consequences.