Two of the walls were lined with bookcases, and on those bookcases sat all kinds of artifacts, expensive items, occult items. Skulls and orbs and silver caskets full of bones and relics, gemstones and blades and locks of hair in glass cases. The fruits of a lifetime of stealing from the greatest magical minds, the strongest and most powerful sorcerers. All of it there in that room.
And somewhere on one of those shelves, or in one of those cabinets, lay an item that made the beast throb with so much power Speare didn’t know how long he’d be able to hold on to it. “So this item we’re looking for. Why do you think we won’t find it? Where is it?”
“I think you ought to tell Ardeth to let sleeping dogs lie.” Nielsen sat down in a big gold chair upholstered in ivory leather that matched the desk. It looked like it was trying to hide behind it, like the leather was camouflage. “So there’s a minor discrepancy in the records, who cares? Some items shouldn’t fall into certain hands. You tell her not to worry about this.”
Speare managed to shake his head—or he managed to shake it the way he wanted it to shake, because it was already trembling. His whole body was trembling. His joints ached; the beast was trying to break through, stretching his skin at the seams. “She’s not going to go for that. She’s not an idiot.”
Nielsen waved a dismissive hand. “She’s not as smart as she thinks she is, either. Good thief—great thief—and good business sense. But the rest? Not so much.”
Ordinarily the comment might have been annoying. Maybe it would have pissed him off a little, if he was in a mood. But at that moment, hearing it made him want to leap across that pretentious desk and rip Nielsen Pollard’s fucking head off. “It belongs to her. She has a right to know what happened.”
“And I’m telling you she doesn’t. Nobody needs to know everything, Speare, especially not the weak. And if she’s so smart, how’d she get mixed up with you? You think I don’t know you, who you are? What kind of man you are? What kind of man Doretti is? Mickey would roll over in his grave if he knew you were sniffing around his girl.”
Jesus, he was in trouble. Nielsen’s comments were not helping him refrain from killing the man, and that was not helping him control the beast. Pain shot up his arm; he didn’t have to look at his right hand to know the skin had split over his knuckles. Holy fuck. “Just tell me what it is. What it’s used for.”
“I’m not a snitch,” Nielsen said. “I’m a professional. I have standards.”
“Lives are at stake here. People have died. More people could die.”
Nielsen shrugged. “And I don’t want to be one of them. I’m very sorry, but that’s—”
That was it. Speare couldn’t control both his temper and the beast at the same time, and his temper was definitely the lesser of the two evils. He lunged forward and grabbed Nielsen by the back of the head, slamming his face onto the desk. The beast wailed with joy, both at the violence and at the stream of energy that ran up his arm from Nielsen’s skin. Whatever it was in that room that was feeding the beast so much, it fed Nielsen, too. It was his, his power, his darkness. “Tell me what it’s used for, and who took it from her.”
Nielsen’s voice was a husky whisper. “Oh my God. You. Oh my God, please don’t—”
Another slam. He didn’t have time for this. The beast was growing, expanding, winding its way down into his body. It felt awful. It made him want to be sick. He needed to get out of there, but he was not going to get another shot at Nielsen, and he needed that information just as much. “Who has it, and what’s it for?”
That was the beast’s voice. Not entirely, not yet, but he could hear it there. The redness around the edges of his vision was expanding, too. Fuck. Hail Mary, full of grace…
“It’s demon-made,” Nielsen said, in a thick, broken voice. “A demon-made item, the token of a lord of hell.”
“What else?” The prayer wasn’t helping much, but “not much” was still something. The Lord is with thee….
“I only know somebody gave it to Mickey. He wouldn’t tell me who, and a few months ago he said somebody else asked for it and he wouldn’t give it to them.”
Blessed art thou amongst women….“But you don’t know who asked. Would the others know? Les, or Martin, or Paul, would they know?”
“No.” But fear slithered into his voice when he said it, and the beast sensed the lie, and loved it. Damn it, it was hard enough keeping the thing from breaking through without Nielsen helping it along.
Speare raised his hand, and Nielsen’s head with it. “Would the others know?”
Pause. “Maybe.”
“What about a demon-sword? The one that killed Theodore and Mercer?” And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus….“You know it did. You know what’s going on. Tell me who’s got the sword.”
“I don’t know.” Nielsen held his hands up—well, as much as he probably could, with his upper body being forced to get cozy with a slab of marble like that—in what Speare assumed was an effort to show he was being honest. “I was contacted by someone who called himself Mr. Dunhill.”
Fuck. Finally he was getting somewhere, and that somewhere wasn’t a place he wanted to go—or should have had to go. Mr. Dunhill wanted a demon-sword, and Mr. Dunhill was a man Speare knew, and that man worked for Fallerstein. Fallerstein, who wasn’t supposed to be doing shit like ritual murder. Guess he’d decided that without Hardin all deals were off, just like Felix and Ardeth had suggested.
Speare knew where he could probably find Dunhill, too. But that still left questions about the mirror: Had Fallerstein tried to get hold of it before resorting to the sword, or did he want both, or what? Had Mickey Coyle had some kind of arrangement with Fallerstein? Was the mirror even related to the sword?
That second of distraction cost him; pain spiked across his left knuckles now, as the beast started to break through there. Right. Think later. Holy Mary, Mother of God…“Say that again.”
“He says he wants a sword. I contact Ardeth, she starts looking, but then he calls and says never mind, he knows where one is and he needs a man to procure it, a good lockpick. So I give him one, and he does.”
“Who?” But he knew already. Pray for us sinners…
He was right. “Mercer. Mercer was the guy. It was an easy lockpick job. That’s all I know, that’s everything. Please, God, please don’t—please just let me go. Just let me go now.”
Nielsen sounded genuinely terrified, and he wasn’t lying again. Something about that bothered Speare, but he couldn’t analyze it. Not then, with pain ratcheting through his body and every bit of strength he had focused on getting out of there without letting the beast take over. Without letting the beast do what it wanted to do, and kill Nielsen. He could hold it for another minute, just long enough to get the final piece of information…but no more than that. Pray for us sinners…
“Why did you hide the mirror from her? What does it do?”
“It’s a gateway,” Nielsen said. Promptly, too. Whatever ethical battle he’d been fighting with himself a few minutes ago, the desire to keep from being maimed or killed had apparently won. “A gateway into hell. A doorway. The Unholy can cross through it to our world, or back into theirs.”
Holy shit. A gateway. A gateway that demons could use to go back to hell. He didn’t need the beast’s excited gyrations in his head to tell him what that meant—what it could mean. If he had a gateway, if he had someone who knew the right ritual, he could send the beast back to where it came from. For one brief second, barely an eyeblink, the world opened up to him. All the things he’d missed, all the things he’d thought he’d never have, became his in that moment. No more constant sinning. Absolution. A real life. A—a relationship. A wife. Children. He could get rid of the beast and have a normal life.
But he wasn’t rid of it yet, and that second, that one brief moment when his focus diverted from keeping the beast at bay, gave it the chance it needed to push itself out farther, to spread through him even more. His skin burned. His visio
n clouded.
He let go of Nielsen. It helped a little, but it was too late to stop it, of course, or at least too late to stop it instantly. Pray for us sinners…
Leaving the room didn’t help. He needed to get out of that apartment, away from it entirely, and he couldn’t take Ardeth with him. The more doors he put between himself and that power, that soul-sucking, wicked power, the better, but he had no idea if even a dozen of them would arrest the process now that it had begun. At least not without a serious, mortal sin, and there weren’t any he could commit at that particular moment; he wasn’t about to kill Ardeth or the piece-of-shit liar she nonetheless cared about, or any innocent people living in the building.
Of course, if the beast came out, it would kill them both, and anyone else it could find, but not until it had played with them for a while first. Pray for us sinners…
At least they were in a high-rise. If he had to, he’d run back into Nielsen’s place and throw himself off the balcony. That still wouldn’t kill the thing, or himself, but it would at least put them out of reach.
“Speare?” Ardeth’s voice came from behind him as he sped out the front door and back into the hallway. “Is something wrong?”
“Give me five minutes. Stay inside.” So low, his voice was so low. It wasn’t his voice anymore.…Now and at the hour of our deaths.
Her footsteps got closer. The beast could hear them despite their lightness. It could smell her, an overwhelming fragrance that filled the hall. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine. Go back inside.” He covered his face with his palm; blood ran down his arm and dripped onto the carpet.
“What happened?” Her hand on his shoulder. He shuddered. God, why wouldn’t she listen to him? Why wouldn’t she go away? His entire body, every muscle he had, shook with the effort of preventing the beast from coming out, of keeping it from spinning around and attacking her. Through the red film over his vision, the red wash in his head, he saw what it would do next. He felt it planning. It would pin her to the wall, tear off her shirt, nick her skin to get a little blood flowing…the beast liked blood. It imagined her screams, the taste of her fear, and his stomach roiled.
“Go…just go.” Without turning to look at her, he sped up his steps. The stairs. He couldn’t wait for the elevator; he’d have to take the stairs.
She wouldn’t let him escape. Both her hands this time, circling around his upper arm, tugging him back.
The beast snarled. Before he could stop it, it spun him around—they both spun around—and grabbed her by the throat; another instant and her back was against the wall, and he was looking through the beast’s crimson eyes, seeing her fear, smelling it like perfume. His lips parted, and his words in the beast’s deep, scratchy voice erupted from between them. “You should have listened to him.”
“Don’t,” she said, in a small, breathless voice that twisted like a knife in his chest.
The beast enjoyed hearing it—he would have enjoyed hearing it himself if the circumstances were different, if it had been him making her sound like that and if she’d had a choice in the matter. The beast was quite pleased that she didn’t; it leaned in so his lips almost touched her neck. The smell of her skin, of her fright, the smell of his blood trickling down both his arms…the sight of her pulse pounding, pounding in her throat, the feel of it racing beneath his fingertips…more power. More strength for the beast. It was so close to breaking free, so close, and when he tried to say something it spoke instead. “Don’t do what?”
She swallowed. She wasn’t just scared, he realized. Fear was there, and uncertainty, but that wasn’t all. Arousal was there, too. The beast chuckled, feeling it, knowing it was there, while Speare himself struggled harder to hold it back. “I can do anything I want. I can do anything you want,” it said, and it chuckled with satisfaction when her face flushed.
This wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. All the things the beast destroyed, all the things it ruined for him, and now it was going after her. He was the reason it was close to her to begin with, and he’d promised himself he’d keep her safe. Now it was pressing her against the wall with his body, making fun of her, and it knew how much that bothered him. It knew what he was thinking, just as much as he knew its thoughts.
Worst of all, it knew how much it was affecting him to stand so close to her, to feel the heat of her skin so close to his, to feel her breasts against his chest with every gasping breath she took. It knew that he wanted this—wanted her. It knew how much he wanted her and how much it killed him that it was doing the things he couldn’t. And it delighted in that.
Fuck its delight. It was not going to score off him again, or rub his nose in something, or use his body to do anything to Ardeth. Anything. With every bit of strength he had, he shoved himself away from her.
The force of it sent him stumbling back into the opposite wall, the beast’s screams echoing in his head. Rage made it stronger, but he was determined to be stronger still. He fought it, exactly as he would another person except it was all in his head. Every store he had of belief in himself, belief in the power of good against evil, belief in God and religion and the church he’d been raised in, and belief in the old religion, the old powers, that Lazaro Doretti had introduced him to when he was fourteen. All of it gathered together to make something he saw as Good, as Pure, even, and he used it to fight the beast. He tensed the muscles of his arms and legs to make it harder for the beast to take them over.
He’d done it before. He’d done it more than once. Sometimes he was successful and sometimes he wasn’t, but this time…this time he had to be. So he fought, crouched on the floor, staring into nothing while the beast howled and spun and raced through him trying to find a way out. After a few seconds he felt—dimly—hands on his shoulders, a warm body against his. Ardeth.
Ardeth holding him, speaking words that sent searing heat through him. After a moment he realized it was Latin, that she was saying the Litany of the Saints in Latin—the first prayer in an exorcism rite. How old Nielsen Pollard in there could think she was stupid was beyond him. The Litany wouldn’t work—at least, it wouldn’t work to drive the beast out of him—but it was helping him get control back. That was a surprise, too, because prayers recited in his head usually helped, sure, but not that much. Not once the beast was really stretching its legs, so to speak, and it definitely had been a few minutes before.
Gradually the red film started fading from his vision. Gradually the shaking slowed and stopped, leaving him on the floor, his hands and forearms wet with blood, his head pounding, his stomach churning, his entire body slick with sweat. Feeling like utter shit, basically. Like how he imagined he’d feel if he’d downed five or six bottles of bourbon in an attempt to distract himself during a bad flu, and then caught the measles while throwing up from the resulting hangover.
Something in his breathing must have alerted Ardeth that he was himself again. Her palms slid over his shoulders, rubbing them briefly before they left him. He wished she’d put them back.
“Do you need anything?” So soft, her voice was. So gentle. “Can I get you something?”
If the beast would allow a bullet to do its job on him, he’d ask her for one, but it wouldn’t. He didn’t want to ask her for anything. He didn’t want her to be there, to have seen what she’d seen and to know what she now knew. Goddamn it.
But she was, and he couldn’t slump there on the floor in the hallway of a strange building forever. He had to get up and he had to drive them back to her place, and to do that he needed some strength. He licked his lips. It didn’t do any good. “Water.” Nope, too hoarse. Try again. “Water?”
A cool bottle was pressed into his hand. He raised it to his lips and drank. Was that going to stay down? It was iffy for a few seconds, but his stomach settled. Good. It didn’t always do that without upending itself first.
Time to get up. He was nowhere near ready, of course; his legs shook from holding him in a crouch and the hallway swayed gently back and f
orth in front of him. The elevator looked like it was in New Mexico or something, so far away.
He didn’t have a choice though, not unless he wanted Ardeth to sit around getting a good look while he trembled and gasped and generally looked pathetic. Or worse, they could head back to Nielsen’s place, and Nielsen could see him trembling, gasping, and looking pathetic after beating him up—shit, he’d beaten Nielsen up.
No. He’d get up. He’d get out of there and maybe lie down for an hour or so—after he made it to a bed, a familiar bed. He’d recover, because he had to.
And he’d think about what Nielsen had said about the mirror, about the possibility that it could free him from the beast. He’d given up hope of that. He’d been told, finally, that it could never happen…but none of the people he’d spoken to had known about the mirror.
He’d think about that later, when he was able to focus on it and really consider it. He’d try to think about it rationally, too.
Or he’d answer his phone. Majowski really had the worst timing, didn’t he? “Hey. What’s up?”
“Speare?”
“Yeah.” Another few swallows of water. He must sound awful. “It’s me.”
“You sound like shit. Did I wake you?”
“What’s up, Majowski? This isn’t a great time.”
Pause. “Okay. Well. Can you meet me?”
Ardeth crouched in front of him, watching him. She held out her hand, her expression asking the question.
He didn’t want to answer it with “yes.” If he’d felt even a little better, if even ten or fifteen minutes more had passed before his phone rang, he might have been able to avoid it—it would take hours before he felt even close to normal again, especially given how bad that one had been, how close the beast had come, but it wouldn’t take too long before he’d at least be able to think and speak normally again.
As it was, though…“Here. Talk to Ardeth. Tell her where you are and we’ll, we’ll come out there.”
She took the phone from him and stood up, pacing as she talked. “Chuck? Pretty good, how are you? Oh, no, he’s okay. I made him some food last night and I think I poisoned him, but he refuses to admit it. Yeah, I know. I don’t think he slept very well in my guest room, either.”