Demon Possessed (4 page)

Pain erupted in the back of her calf, a stinging horrible pain. She stumbled. Shit, what was that? No time to look. She kept going, but her next step felt as if it was taken through seaweed, and her hands and feet tingled in a way she didn’t like.

The door in front of her wavered, tilted at an odd angle. Why wasn’t it upright?

Another sharp pain in her leg. She opened her mouth to try to scream, but she couldn’t seem to make any sound come out except for a queer, muted gurgle.

Panic started taking over. She could feel her blood racing through her veins, faster and faster. Could feel her palms hit the hot sidewalk. She’d fallen. She’d fallen and her sweaty hair clung to her neck and her mouth wouldn’t close and something icy touched her leg where it hurt. The last thing she saw was a flash of impossibly bright light bleaching the front of her house.

Chapter Four

Why did she always have to throw up?

It seemed as though in every time of stress, every time of worry or fear, Megan’s overly sensitive stomach was the first thing to rebel, spilling its contents into or onto whatever happened to be handy.

Worse than that, these days it seemed as if she always had a fucking audience. And worst of all, yet again it was Greyson.

“I’m sorry,” she croaked. Sweat still dripped from her hair and into the toilet bowl, but not from the heat. At least not from the heat outside; they were safely insulated from that by the walls of her house and the low whirring of the air conditioning. No, this was from her internal temperature: boiling hot yet freezing, while her muscles quaked and her head threatened to split open. Why not? Her stomach already had. She would have been thankful it was empty if it had mattered even the tiniest bit.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Greyson wiped at her forehead with the cool washcloth again; it felt so good she sighed. “
Litobora
venom is horribly poisonous. Anyone would be sick. If they survived.”

“If this is surviving ?” she started, then stopped when the corner of his mouth turned down. Right. This was something to be taken very seriously. And she intended to, as soon as she was able. At that particular moment she was too busy and semidelirious to focus on anything.

The cloth moved around to the back of her neck. “Want to try getting in bed?”

It took her a few seconds to answer. “I’d nod, but I’m afraid to move my head too much.”

His soft laugh comforted her. So did the heat of his body as he gently helped her up off the floor—her stomach gave a warning twist but held—and back into her room. Her legs felt rubbery beneath her.

“How about if I carry you?”

“No. No, I can make it.”

She did, barely, and collapsed onto the bed with piteous gratitude. But the sheets were icy. The whole room was suddenly frigid, worse than standing outside in a swimsuit in the middle of winter.

“I’m cold.”

A few seconds of silence, just enough time for her to wonder what he was doing, and then his bare skin pressed against hers, bringing with it the faint scent of smoke and his aftershave. Oh, that was good, both the heat and the smell. As a
vregonis
demon—a fire demon—he had a body temperature that was perpetually elevated. It had made the summer interesting and accounted at least in part for the meat-locker-esque temperatures at which she usually kept her house. She’d gotten into the habit of cranking the air up half an hour or so before she expected him to arrive, and at that moment, sick or not, she half expected to see ice crystals forming in the untouched glass of Sprite that Greyson’s guard Malleus had set by her bed.

But as much as Greyson’s overly warm body had to be worked around and compensated for in summer, at that moment she was eternally and ridiculously grateful for it. She almost thought she heard her own skin sizzle when it came into contact with his; some of the cramping in her muscles relaxed.

Only to tense up again when she saw, through her half-closed eyes, Greyson’s second guard and Malleus’s brother, Maleficarum, advancing on her with a hypodermic needle. Something clear squirted ominously from its sharp silver tip.

“Oh, no,” she managed. “You are not giving me a shot.”

“’Sonly under the skin, m’lady. You’ll barely even feel it, honest.” Maleficarum’s features did not do “innocent” well; he looked like a serial killer trying to hide a severed head behind his back. Not his fault. It was simply the way he was made. Bald head, horns, large frame, beady eyes. It was a good thing he was a guard demon, because his appearance would have been an issue in most professions. Megan couldn’t imagine, for example, Maleficarum as a pediatrician. Or either of his brothers. Spud, the third brother, was probably prowling around outside.

“I don’t want—”

“Let him.” Greyson rubbed her arm. “It’s basically just an antivenom. And something for the pain.”

“And that’s why I don’t want it. I need to tell you what happened today.”

“It won’t put you to sleep. Just let him give you the shot. Please?”

She hesitated. On the one hand, she wasn’t at all sure she believed him when he said it wouldn’t put her to sleep. On the other, something to kill the tremendous crashing ache in her head and the stabbing pains in the rest of her body sounded good.

Finally she nodded. “Go ahead, then. But if I fall asleep, I’m blaming you.”

“And your vengeance will be terrible indeed, I imagine.”

“Yes, it will.” She squeezed her eyes shut as Maleficarum wiped at her arm with an alcohol pad and slid the needle in. It didn’t really hurt—she wasn’t bothered by needles much anyway—but the necessity of it . . . that, she didn’t want to face.

A demon attack. A
litobora
demon, a poisonous psyche demon. Had Greyson and Malleus not shown up when they did—had they not been on their way to her place already—she would have died. As the pain in her body eased, that simple fact drilled itself into her head, crashing through every other thought and leaving her with nothing else.

“Somebody sent it, right?” she asked, dreading the answer. “I mean, that demon didn’t just show up here by chance.”

Damn him, and damn Maleficarum too, now sneaking out of the room. Her eyelids were getting heavy; whatever was in that shot was most certainly going to put her to sleep. But along with that came an easing of her nausea and the relaxation of her muscles, so she really couldn’t complain too much.

“I would think so, yes.” He snuggled her more closely to his chest. “A lion doesn’t just show up on your doorstep without help. Neither do
litobora
.”

“So somebody is specifically trying to kill me?”

Pause. Long pause, while his body tensed against hers. “I would think so, yes.”

“Shit.” Once again she knew she should care. Once again she couldn’t quite bring herself to; whatever was in that syringe was powerful. “Who do you think it is?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you’ll find out, right?”

His lips on her forehead felt like a kiss through cotton. “I’ll certainly try.”

“I’m not sure I like the sound of that ‘try.’ ”

He sighed. “I’m not either.”

“Why would someone want to kill me?”

“Do you really want to discuss this now?”

No, she didn’t. But there didn’t seem to be much choice. Despite the gentle tugging of sleep, despite the peace finally settled in her limbs and stomach, she still felt the faint sting on the back of her calf. Still couldn’t quite forget the terror of those few minutes standing outside, alone but not at all alone.

“I don’t. But I’m kind of thinking we should.”

He helped her shift around to face him; the world spun for a second when she rolled over but settled again when her gaze found his face. Those sharp features, that dark hair and deep brown eyes, so familiar now, calmed her, but the look in those eyes didn’t. He was worried, and seeing him worried shook her.

He waited for her to settle comfortably before he spoke. “I suppose there are lots of reasons someone might want to kill you. Anyone in a position of power is also in a position of vulnerability. As you know.”

Yes, she knew. This was an old, old discussion. Her job—seeing patients and, to a lesser extent, the radio show—put her at risk. But what was she supposed

to do?

Three choices, none of them appealing. The first was to take a piece of the undoubtedly crime-filled action the other Gretnegs offered her. Lucrative, but she had to be able to face herself in the mirror every day. The second was to let Greyson support her. Keep her. She didn’t even want to think about how she would face herself if she did that, let alone how she would fill her days.

The last was doing more with the radio show. Taking speaking engagements. Appearing on television. She didn’t want to do it, and she was pretty sure Greyson would practically have a heart attack if she suggested it. The semipublic nature of the show already made him antsy, she knew, although thankfully the media blitz the station orchestrated when the show first aired had died down. Going on TV, well, things didn’t get much more public. And there was that whole pesky public-image-dating-criminal issue.

Three choices. None of which she wanted to make. But at some point she would have to make one, especially now. That the attack had occurred at her home didn’t matter much. Neither did the fact that it was demon-related. She was vulnerable, and she knew she was, and she’d been hoping to put off having to do something about it, but it looked as though her days of putting it off were coming to a close.

But first things first. The knock at the door gave her the opportunity to veer off subject, and she was glad for it. “Come in,” she said, and was not remotely surprised when Rocturnus slunk sheepishly through the door.

“Megan, I’m sorry.” If he’d possessed a hat, she had little doubt he would have been turning it in his anxious fists at that very moment. As it was, he twisted his long-fingered hands together and stared at the carpet. “I should have been here.”

“It’s okay, Roc. You didn’t know.”

“You didn’t call me.”

“I thought it might—oh, never mind. It’s not like you would have been able to do anything about it if you had been here anyway.”

He straightened up, insult written all over his face. At least so she assumed. Her vision was a little bleary, haloed around the edges. “I could have helped. I could have done something.”

She sighed. “Right. Of course you could have. I’m sorry, Roc.”

“Do you think it’s to do with the FBI?”

“No, they wouldn’t—” she started, but Greyson cut her off.

“FBI?”

Oh, right. She hadn’t had a chance to tell him yet. “They came to see me today.”

“What, the entire Bureau?”

She would have laughed, but her body didn’t seem to be capable of it. She settled for a sleepy smile. “No, just one agent. She came about the Bellreive. Offered me immunity.”

“In exchange for what?”

“Testimony. About what happens at the meeting, I guess.”

“What was her name?”

She told him. “Oh, and one of my patients quit because he’s going to have an exorcism instead.”

“What?”

She repeated it, or at least started to. Halfway through the story she had to stop; he was laughing too hard for her to continue, and Roc was practically falling on the floor.

“Stop, it’s not funny. Well, maybe it’s funny. But no, don’t laugh, you’re shaking the bed.”

That plea, at least, had an effect. With obvious difficulty Greyson got himself under control; she didn’t think she’d ever seen him laugh that hard. Roc continued to giggle, a subtle, bizarre backdrop as she shut her eyes again.

“Exorcism? Darling, your patients never cease to amaze me. Exorcism, of all things.”

“Ted could really get hurt.”

“And that’s the choice Ted made. He’s a grown man. If he wants to do something incredibly stupid, that’s his prerogative. I somehow think we have more important things to worry about right now, don’t you?”

She opened one eye—opening both seemed like too much effort—and glared at him. As much as she could with one eye anyway. “I’m trying not to think about it.”

“Right. Well. Enjoy one last night of not thinking about it, then, because tomorrow we need to get to work. In more ways than one.”

“The meeting.” She sighed.

“The meeting,” he said. “And the fact that whoever it is who’s trying to kill you will probably be there.”