The Devil's Due Read online

  The next yard I tried to cross had motion-sensing lights that came blazing to life as soon as I set foot on the lawn. Worse, there were lights on in the house, which meant someone might look out to see what had activated the sensor in the yard. I was still worried about innocent bystanders—or overprotective landowners, as the case might be—so instead of continuing my sprint across the lawn, I veered toward the patch of overgrown woods that edged the property.

  The lights of the backyard had killed my night vision, so the moment I plunged into the trees, I felt like I’d gone blind. Which really sucked, because I wasn’t kidding when I said the woods were overgrown. I hadn’t taken two steps before my feet tangled with some particularly aggressive underbrush and I crashed to the ground.

  Somehow, I managed to keep hold of the Taser, and without even thinking about it, I rolled violently to my right, just avoiding Brewster’s next pounce. I hoped his night vision was as impaired as my own. If he couldn’t see the Taser, which I was doing my best to conceal, then I might be able to take him by surprise.

  I came to a painful stop against a fallen tree, its bark soft and crumbly with rot. I was probably acquiring all kinds of hitchhiking nightlife.

  I squinted in the darkness. My eyes were beginning to adjust, and I could see Brewster’s silhouette as he pushed to his feet, about five yards away from me.

  I sucked in as much air as I could, and for the first time, I could hear something other than the pounding of my heart and the thud of pursuing footsteps: barking dogs. Loud barking dogs. As in, barking dogs that had probably just been let out of Overprotective Landowner’s house and were now on their way to deal with the trespassers.

  Brewster didn’t seem to care about the dogs. He started coming toward me, slowly, stalking, ready for me to leap to my feet and make another run for it.

  If he jumps you, he could break your neck before you even have a chance to pull the trigger on the Taser, Lugh said, his voice urgent in my head.

  I knew he was right. But if I moved with demon quickness to avoid the strike, then we could end up sending Brewster’s demon back to Hell—okay, the Demon Realm, but right now Hell sounded like a better option—with the knowledge that I wasn’t alone in my body. Unacceptable.

  The obvious conclusion was that I couldn’t let him jump on me. I could try to dodge, but if this ended up taking too much longer, those dogs would make an appearance, and I didn’t think I needed any more complications.

  So I did the one thing Brewster couldn’t possibly expect from a human woman who’d been fleeing from him in apparent terror. I attacked.

  With a battle cry to give me courage, I launched myself at him, Taser held before me, finger squeezing the trigger even before I made contact. He almost reacted in time, almost managed to grab hold of my arm before I shoved a fistful of Taser in his belly. But you know what they say about horseshoes and hand grenades…

  Brewster collapsed into a pile of what I hoped was poison ivy—not that I could see diddly squat—just as two large, snarling masses of fur and teeth burst through the bushes.

  I was out of breath and overloaded with adrenaline, and my Taser was running low on battery power. Plus, I wasn’t in the mood to be mauled. So with only the briefest of efforts, I let Lugh take control.

  Don’t you dare hurt those dogs, I warned. They’re just doing their job.

  But apparently, their job involved a whole lot of intimidation and not much else. Instead of leaping for me and going for my jugular, they merely came to a stop and stood there between me and their home, teeth bared, neck fur ruffled, very intimidating snarls rising from their throats.

  Moving slowly, keeping a wary eye on the dogs, which now that my eyes had finally adjusted all the way to the darkness I could see were a pair of German shepherds, Lugh bent to pick up Brewster’s limp body. The dogs snarled a little louder, but still refrained from attacking. In the background, I could hear a man’s voice calling to them, asking them what they’d found. I laughed to myself. Did the guy expect them to answer?

  Backing away carefully and quietly, Lugh carried Brewster deeper into the weed-choked patch of woods, and the dogs didn’t follow.

  Chapter 29

  I wanted to take control back immediately, but Lugh pointed out that I wasn’t strong enough to lug Brewster all the way back to the house, and I had to concede the point. To our mutual surprise, we ran into Raphael when we were less than halfway back.

  While the chase and the final confrontation had felt like it had taken hours, I doubted more than about five or ten minutes had passed since I’d started running for it. Raphael should still be curled into a quivering ball on the Brewsters’ floor, not practically colliding with Lugh and me in the woods.

  Lugh apparently came to the same conclusion. He dropped Brewster’s body and put his fists on his hips. The gesture was so typical of me I had to laugh. Of course, I didn’t laugh, because I wasn’t driving and couldn’t.

  “You have some explaining to do, brother,” Lugh said.

  “Not now,” Raphael answered with a negligent wave of his hand. “We’ve got other things to worry about at the moment.” He dropped to his knees beside Brewster. “I gather you Tasered him?” he asked, then continued without waiting for an answer. “It won’t hold him very long, and, as you might have noticed, he’s a bit hard to kill.”

  He grabbed Brewster and rolled him over onto his stomach, pinning his arms behind his back, though at this moment Brewster couldn’t put up a fight.

  “Morgan, you need to exorcize him, fast.” He gave me a pointed look, which I interpreted as “Don’t let on you’re not Morgan at the moment, even if you did just call me ‘brother.’”

  I wanted answers to my questions as badly as Lugh did, but Raphael was right. I might be able to get one more effective jolt out of my Taser before the battery died, but it wouldn’t hold Brewster for long.

  Lugh seamlessly slid into the background. I was back in control, but I didn’t feel too hot. Maybe it was all that running, maybe it was the fading adrenaline high… I didn’t know what was wrong, but my knees felt weak, my stomach twisted unhappily, and my head ached. Not the ice-pick-in-the-eye sensation that was Lugh trying to take control, but an allover pounding that felt almost like a hangover.

  Now wasn’t the time to moan about feeling sick, though. We had to get rid of the demon that had possessed Devon Brewster III before he became a danger once again. I sat on the ground in front of Brewster— an act for which my weak knees thanked me—and closed my eyes.

  It was hard to concentrate on anything but the queasiness and the pounding in my head, but I tried to reproduce the calm, tranquil trance state I’d achieved in Tommy’s car despite all the nerves that had troubled me. My gorge rose, and I had all I could handle trying to fight it down.

  “Hurry up!” Raphael urged, and I wanted to give him a swift kick in the ass. Putting more pressure on me wasn’t going to make relaxing any easier.

  I almost blurted out that he should do it himself if he was in such a hurry, but remembered just in time that humans weren’t supposed to know demons could perform exorcisms. I didn’t know what Brewster’s demon might make of my forbidden knowledge, but I didn’t want to find out.

  I could hear Brewster starting to struggle. Weakly, to be sure, but he wouldn’t stay weak much longer. I had to fight past the sickness and get this done.

  When I managed to conjure the scent of vanilla in my mind, I almost hurled. Food smells and queasy stomachs don’t go well together. I was on the verge of panicking, when Lugh said, Here, let me, and took control of me for the third time this evening.

  Instantly, my body steadied, and strength returned. Lugh mimicked my ritual with no trouble, and he was more than powerful enough to cast the demon from Brewster’s body. He put me back in control as soon as he was done.

  I felt even worse than I had before, and this time I couldn’t stop myself from being sick in the bushes.

  “What’s wrong?” Raphael asked, s
till pinning the now-human Brewster to the ground.

  My hands were shaking, and my skin felt clammy. And I hadn’t the faintest idea what was wrong with me. And why Lugh hadn’t fixed whatever it was after he’d done the exorcism?

  I think your body is having an adverse reaction to the continued changes of control, Lugh said in my mind. I tried to fix it, but I think I just made it worse. Sorry.

  Great! Just when I’d gotten almost comfortable with the ability to let Lugh help out when necessary, there was another reason not to.

  “Can I get up now?” Devon Brewster asked, his voice surprisingly calm after all he must have gone through.

  Raphael rolled off him, and Brewster raised himself to a sitting position. Despite my misery, it was almost funny, the three of us sitting here on the ground in a clump of mangy woods in the dark, but no one seemed in a huge hurry to get up.

  “How are you feeling, Mr. Brewster?” I asked, trying to take the focus off how I, myself, was feeling.

  Brewster blinked at me. “My name is Dick.”

  I was pleasantly surprised to discover his mind was intact. Rarely did two exorcisms in a row turn out so favorably for the host. But I wondered if he was suffering from some kind of shock after the exorcism. “Is ‘Dick’ your nickname?”

  “What?” Devon/Dick said.

  “Is ‘Dick’ a nickname for ‘Devon’?” I asked, speaking slowly and carefully.

  His forehead furrowed with concentration. “I don’t know.”

  What the hell was the matter with him? Maybe he had some kind of weird brain damage after all. Maybe the demon hadn’t thoroughly healed those gunshot wounds. I was trying to remember one of those simple questions you’re supposed to ask people who might have concussions, but Dick/Devon spoke again.

  “Am I supposed to know?” he asked, and there was no missing the anxiety in his voice. “I’m sorry.” He sounded even more agitated. “I’ll do better next time!”

  “Hush,” Raphael said quietly. “No one’s upset with you.”

  Dick/Devon looked enormously relieved, then broke out into a goofy smile. “My name is Dick,” he said with renewed confidence.

  Thinking of those gunshot wounds to his head made me think of how impossible what I’d witnessed had been. Those wounds would have killed any normal demon host. And then I remembered the bits and pieces of information Raphael had reluctantly coughed up about the Houston project’s goals. Goals like accelerated healing.

  My stomach gave an unhappy lurch, but luckily I had nothing left in it or I’d have been puking in the bushes again.

  Dick was one of the Houston superhosts, and if this was his real personality we were seeing right now, he must have been possessed for a long time. Certainly throughout the course of his marriage. But it made no sense! It couldn’t be a coincidence that two Houston superhosts ended up living in the same house. And if Dick/Devon was a superhost, then what the hell was he doing living the life of the idle rich?

  I turned to glare at Raphael. He was trying to act as baffled as I felt, but he looked too nervous to pull it off.

  “What the hell is going on?” I asked him.

  “I want to go home,” Dick said plaintively.

  But how could we take him back to Claudia and the girls like this?

  “We’ll take you home,” Raphael promised, “but we have some things to take care of first.”

  “Yeah, like you telling me—” I began, but of course he cut me off.

  “I’ll explain later. Right now, let’s figure out what to tell Claudia and get out of here.”

  “We can’t take him home to Claudia like this!” I insisted.

  Raphael grimaced. “That’s not what he means by ‘home,’” he said cryptically. “I promise I’ll explain, but right now we have to get back.”

  I wanted the full explanation now. But Claudia was probably still terrified that the demons were going to come for her children again. I couldn’t leave her like that while I satisfied my need for answers. “All right,” I agreed reluctantly. “But what are we going to tell her?”

  Biting my tongue until I could have some quality alone-time with Raphael was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. Especially when I felt like I had three cases of flu all at the same time.

  I let Raphael do all the talking when we got back to the Brewster place. He was, after all, a consummate liar. He told Claudia that her husband had been possessed, and that he’d attacked me and then run off when Raphael had come to my rescue. Naturally, Claudia was devastated, and I would have felt sorry for her if I weren’t so busy feeling sorry for myself. Dick—who’d shown no indication that he thought of Claudia’s house as his home—lay on the backseat of Tommy’s car, keeping out of sight, while we tied up loose ends. I’d have been worried about him running off, if it weren’t for his childlike—and guilt-inducing—faith that Raphael and I would help him get home.

  Deciding to pin the three dead bodies all on Brewster’s demon, Raphael called Adam and asked him to come “investigate.” He and I and the mysterious “Dick” headed out of there before Adam arrived. Sometimes, it’s useful to have the Director of Special Forces in your pocket when you’re constantly finding yourself at crime scenes.

  When we were a few miles from the house, Dick sat up in the backseat. “Will you take me home now?” he asked, and there was a lost, forlorn sound to his voice. Clearly, his elevator didn’t go all the way to the top floor, and I wondered what we were going to do with him.

  “Not quite yet,” Raphael said. “It’s late right now. We’ll get you on your way in the morning.” I started to say something indignant, but Raphael cut me off before I got started. “We’ll talk later,” he said, with emphasis on the word “later.” He gave me a significant look, and I understood the message: not in front of our passenger.

  I didn’t like it, but again I held my tongue. “So where are we going?” I asked instead, slumping down in my seat and hoping I wasn’t about to be sick again as my stomach heaved. I was sweating and shivering at the same time.

  “To Adam’s house,” Raphael answered. “Dominic’s expecting us. They have a guest room where they can keep our friend for the night.”

  I turned in my seat to look at Dick, then regretted the motion when my head started throbbing even harder. He was staring straight ahead, his gaze unfocused, almost vacant. I wondered if he had brothers named Tom and Harry. I imagined some demons would have found that funny.

  Obviously, Dick was a product of Raphael and Dougal’s eugenics program, and obviously they’d made much more progress than Raphael had ever admitted. And since they considered intelligence a drawback in a potential host, I guess they must have been happy indeed with Dick. I bet he’d never set foot outside the laboratory until some demon had decided to make use out of him.

  I wished letting Lugh take control again wouldn’t make me even sicker. Because when I got Raphael alone in a room, I’d love to have enough strength to beat the shit out of him.

  We arrived at Adam and Dom’s place, and we installed Dick in the guest room. The same guest room I’d stayed in a couple of times—you know, the one with the locks? I didn’t think Dick was going to try to go anywhere, but I had to agree that keeping him locked in was a necessary precaution.

  Afterward, we all went downstairs to the kitchen, and Dominic made a pot of extra-strong Italian coffee. It smelled heavenly, but my stomach still felt awful, and I didn’t dare drink any.

  Dominic wanted us to wait for Adam before I began my interrogation of Raphael, but I didn’t have that kind of patience. Besides, I’d waited long enough.

  “It’s time to start spilling the secrets,” I told Raphael. “Now!” He was actually uncomfortable enough to squirm, and that raised my paranoia level even higher. “What the hell is Dick? How could he heal a bullet wound to the head in ten seconds? And is Tommy the same?”

  Raphael squirmed some more, then took a big sip of his coffee before straightening up in his seat and raising his head to
meet my gaze.

  “I suppose a demonstration will explain things a little better than words,” he said. He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. Then suddenly, there was a loud cracking sound, and Raphael let out a cry of pain.

  I was on my feet before I knew it, hand grabbing for my Taser, eyes scanning the kitchen for enemies. But it was just me and Dominic and Raphael.

  I opened my mouth to ask Raphael what was wrong, but the words died in my throat when I got a good look at him. My knees gave way and my ass thumped down hard on the chair.

  Tommy Brewster was attractive enough in a bland sort of way, if you could get past the sullen expressions that seemed natural on his face whether he was possessed or not. His least attractive feature was his nose, which was a little too large for his face and hooked a bit at the end.

  But as I watched, I heard more popping and cracking noises, and that hooked beak of his started to flatten out. Raphael was gripping the table with both hands, sweat dewing his skin as his eyes squinched shut and his teeth clenched.

  It took maybe thirty seconds, but by the time Raphael let out a sigh of relief and relaxed, Tommy’s nose was straight and perfectly proportioned to his face.

  “Shit,” Raphael said, wiping the sweat from his face, “that hurt like hell.”

  Dominic and I looked at one another, and I’m sure my face looked as confused and alarmed as his. Neither one of us spoke. For once in my life, I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Raphael, still panting a bit from pain and effort, stared ahead at nothing as he spoke. “I told you the Houston project was working at making hosts with more malleable flesh. You saw the evidence of how much progress they’ve made tonight. I’d say Dick up there is from the same generation as Tommy.”

  I swallowed an almost absurd need to laugh. I guess my Tom, Dick, and Harry suspicion hadn’t been misplaced. “But Dick is Tommy’s father, so how can they be the same generation?”