Hellhound

“I’m afraid so.” Poor Bonita, dragged back to hell so Myrddin and Pryce could figure out why and how the Morfran left her body. I didn’t hold out much hope she’d escape a second time.

“Can we go after them?”

I shook my head. “I can perceive the demon plane, but it’s like I’m looking at it through a window. I can’t step into it bodily.” Once, I’d been pulled physically into the demon plane by a Hellion, as Pryce had done to Bonita. I almost hadn’t made it back.

“Damn it!” Daniel kicked the table. Then he bent over the fallen guard, feeling for a pulse. He wouldn’t find one.

As he straightened, his expression grim, someone began working the lock mechanism in the door. The bolts shot back, and it opened to reveal a doorway full of gun barrels.

“Put down your weapons,” Daniel said. “You’re too damn late. What the hell took you so long?”

“Sorry, sir. We had two men monitoring the video. One of ’em tried to contact me over the radio, but then it went to static. I sent Mike in, and Mike came running back yelling the guys in the video room were dead. Both of ’em. And their monitor showed this room empty and the table knocked over. We opened the door soon as we knew.”

“Didn’t you hear—?”

“Daniel,” I interrupted, “it wouldn’t have done any good. There would have been more deaths.”

Daniel glanced at where Pryce had stood and taken several bullets. Spots of black blood marked the wall. Yet Pryce had disappeared into the demon plane and returned good—or bad—as new, in less than a second. “There’s no way to kill him?”

“It would take something like a grenade, blow him to bits before he could pop back to the demon plane and repair the damage. Or else make him vulnerable by severing him from his shadow demon—he can’t enter the demon plane without that connection.” That’s how I’d once defeated Pryce, all too temporarily. Now, however, Pryce was bound to the Destroyer. He could draw on the Hellion’s demonic energy to give himself power and extend his life.

Out in the hallway, a slim man with close-cropped hair exited the stairwell door. He wore a dark suit and hurried over to us. “I got here as soon as I could,” he said to Daniel. “Here’s the phone you requisitioned.”

“Vicky, this is my new partner, Ramón Sandoval,” Daniel said, taking the phone. “Ramón, Vicky Vaughn is our demon expert.”

“Nice to meet you,” he said as we shook hands. His dark brown eyes showed friendliness, not a trace of the hostility that was the calling card of Daniel’s previous partner.

“You, too,” I said. I turned to Daniel. “Not that I was looking forward to seeing his smiling face or anything, but what happened to Detective Foster?”

Ramón laughed, and I liked him for it. Even Daniel let a smile quirk one side of his mouth upward. “He quit. Took an executive position with Humans First.” Humans First was a political action committee pushing an anti-paranormal agenda.

“As a law enforcement liaison,” Ramón added. “They’re welcome to him, as far as I’m concerned.”

“He claimed he’d been considering the move for a while, but I think that being half strangled by a PDH was too much for him.”

“Yeah. Hard to maintain his tougher-than-the-monsters image when word of that got around.” I wanted to join their laughter, but the reference to getting strangled by a zombie made me need to check on Mab. That, and a deep-down, little-girl desire to reassure myself of her love.

“I have to find my aunt,” I said, moving toward the stairwell. I hoped she’d shifted. Not only to heal, but to avoid Pryce and the Destroyer. Pryce had sent those zombies to kill Mab—both of them had gone straight for her. “Kill the lady!” Bonita had said the crows commanded. And according to Butterfly, Pryce needed to get rid of “some lady” to move forward with his plans.

I wasn’t the Lady of the Cerddorion. Mab was.

“Wait, first let me give you this.” Daniel held out the cell phone Ramón had brought. “Tonight when I got word of an attack at the airport, I couldn’t get in touch with you. I didn’t know you were in the middle of it. I need to be able to reach you at any hour. So keep this with you and don’t turn it off.”

“You know why I don’t have one of those, right?” Cell phones can’t withstand the energy blast that accompanies a shift. After I’d destroyed three in a single month, I was finished.

“Don’t worry about that. If you blow it up, or even just lose it, let me know immediately and I’ll get you another. We need to stay in close touch.”

He programmed the number into his own phone, then made sure my new phone had his numbers in it. I felt kind of dumb as he showed me the basics of making and answering calls and listening to voice mail—my six-year-old nephew could do all that plus play games—but it wasn’t my fault the technology changed so fast.

I took the phone and stuck it in my back pocket, then went to find Mab.

MAB WAITED FOR ME WHERE I’D LEFT HER, AND KANE SAT beside her. My heart leapt to see him, then sank as the thought hit me how badly I’d let both of them down. I stood in front of them, not knowing what to say. Mab had a feather stuck in her hair. Pigeon, by the look of it. Good choice for shifting in a city. As I plucked it away, I inspected her throat. The bruises were gone. Mab closed her hand around mine and squeezed.

Kane stood abruptly. “Let’s be on our way.”

“I thought you’d gone.”

“I probably should have.” His eyes locked onto mine, then looked away. “I had to make some calls. Let the rally organizers know I’m running late.”

“The rally is still on?”

“Of course. After this . . .” He still wouldn’t look at me as his arm swept across the hall. “We need it more than ever.” He offered his hand to Mab. “Are you ready?”

“Indeed.” She accepted his assistance in standing, and I noticed she was a little wobbly on her feet. Not surprising after a shift, but when I asked if she was all right, she assured me that she was.

And that was all we could manage to say to each other.

Mab took my arm and we followed Kane, who was already pushing her luggage trolley toward the doors, out into the night.

KANE’S BMW CARRIED US ALL BACK TO DEADTOWN: KANE, Mab, me, and the most awkward, uncomfortable silence I’d ever experienced. Mab sat in back, staring out the side window, her hand on the small suitcase beside her. I sat in front, inches from Kane yet feeling like we were on opposite sides of an impenetrable steel wall.

Who knew what the others were thinking? I didn’t want to guess. But for me, most of my thoughts were of the kicking-myself variety. Kicking myself that I hadn’t told Kane about the Night Hag’s offer. That I hadn’t told either of them about Dad. That I’d let Difethwr’s rage take over, to the extent that I was ready to attack my own aunt.

Shit. The car may have held three passengers, but I was crowded out by remorse and regrets.

“I think it would be wise,” Kane said, speaking to Mab, not me, as we neared Government Center, “to stow your weapons in my office vault, as we discussed earlier. The authorities might let you bring them into Deadtown, but you’ll never get them out again. Not with the situation as it is now.”

“Is there time before your rally?” Mab asked, her gaze never straying from the window. It was just past ten o’clock.

“There is. I don’t take the stage until one.”

“Then I agree.”

Kane steered into the garage on New Sudbury Street where he paid an outrageous monthly fee for his reserved parking space. When he stopped the car, I unbuckled my seat belt and started to open the door.

“Wait here,” he said.

“I was going to help you lug that trunk up to your office.”

“No need. Keep your aunt company. I’ll be right back.” He turned around and peered at Mab. “Before I lock up the trunk, do you need anything out of it?”

“No, thank you. I already have it.”

“Have what?” I asked. “Mab, Kane’s right. Any weapons you bring into Deadtown now won’t get out again.”

“Not a weapon,” Mab said. “The gauntlet.” She still wouldn’t look at me. “Thank you, Mr. Kane. Please do secure my . . . er, cargo.”

Kane nodded and pulled back from the window. A few seconds later, the car’s trunk opened. The whole car shifted as Kane lifted the heavy box. I watched him trudge toward the elevator, Mab’s trunk bowing his broad shoulders. I thought about getting out of the car and helping, whether he wanted me to or not, but I didn’t want to be brushed off again. I slumped in my seat.

But not for long. I turned and looked back at my aunt.

“Mab . . .” I began.

“Not now, child. I know you wish to talk, and we shall. But not now. At the moment, I’m tired. The shift healed my injuries, but it required energy I scarcely had. Most of all, I need to think. So please have some patience with an old woman.”

“You’re not old.” My aunt had lived for more than three centuries, but she was the definition of vitality. I didn’t like the tone of defeat in her voice.

Mab didn’t answer, so I pressed forward with what I really wanted to say. “Mab, I’m sorry. Please believe that. Are . . . are things okay between us?” It was a question I’d never expected to have to ask my aunt, but her weariness and her refusal to look at me made me frightened.

Her face still turned toward the window, she waved a hand, then let it drop to her lap. “It’s as I said before, child. The Destroyer has a strong hold on you.” She paused. “Stronger than I’d imagined. That is why I must think now.”

I turned back to stare through the windshield at the concrete wall. We sat in silence until Kane returned.