Demon Inside

Maybe this would be a good test run. See exactly what she could handle.

Halarvus got back to his feet. Dark blood ran from his nose. Megan forced herself to look at it as he wiped it away, making a thin streak across his face.

No desire to taste it came to her, no crazy urge to lick it from his papery skin. Maybe that had ended?

“Just because you’re angry—,” Halarvus started, but Megan interrupted him.

“I’m not angry.” She willed it to be so, knowing he could sense it. “But I’m keeping what’s mine.”

She turned to Roc. “Take him into the hall.”

The others waited for her, the white light from the high ceiling bouncing off their multicolored heads.

Their silence followed her as she stepped up onto the little dais and took the seat that had once belonged to the Accuser. Now it was hers, a heavy, ornate gold thing that looked like Louis XIV had designed it in an opium haze. Knobs and carved leaves dug into her skin when she sat; she’d had the original cushion burned and kept forgetting to get another one.

Another reminder, if she’d needed one, of how far she’d been letting things slip here. She should know better than that. Problems and complications didn’t go away simply because one wished they would.

Rocturnus brought Halarvus to stand before her, in the center of the space cleared by the others, and climbed up himself to the chair beside her. She couldn’t get out of this one by lashing out at all of them and ru

Because if she didn’t she probably wouldn’t survive.

“Halarvus, you’ve been working against me?”

“I’ve been telling the truth,” he said. His little eyes gleamed. “That you aren’t strong enough. That your human heart isn’t in this. You haven’t gotten involved with the other Meegras and their businesses. You haven’t been looking out for our interests.”

Megan snapped her head toward Rocturnus. “What’s he talking about?”

“The other Meegra Yezer have been horning in on us,” he whispered. “We’re small. We don’t really have any defenses. When they send some of their bigger demons to force us out…” He caught her glare. “What? I told you this before.”

“Yes, but…” He had told her, and again, she hadn’t really paid attention. That was so unlike her! Had she been so wrapped up in—well, okay, yes, he’d taken up a lot of her time. Plus the radio show, and her practice…

Greyson had been right. Maintaining her practice and her demons was too much work. It made the decision to give up the practice sting a little less, like a child giving up a job in the city to go home and take care of an elderly parent. At least she’d made the right decision once in the last few weeks, even if it left her finances awfully tight.

She cleared her throat. “Tonight I attend the funeral of Templeton Black,” she a

“I want a list of names, if you know them, of demons who’ve harassed you and what houses they’re in. I’ll see the other Gretnegs and tell them to leave you alone.”

The demons shifted on their feet, looking both slightly mollified and doubtful.

“I’ll make sure you stop losing humans. But my rules stand. No child abuse. No murder.”

“Not even of criminals? Bad guys?” one of the demons asked hopefully.

She started to say no, then stopped. All the power in the world was no good if she couldn’t hold on to them long enough to exert it. “Case-by-case basis,” she said, trying not to feel like a monster and failing. “It has to be approved by me.”

They waited, their gazes on her, and this time she knew what they expected. Once again that chasm stood in front of her, filled with flames, but this time it was the fire of Hell, of destruction, not of desire.

There was no choice to make. There hadn’t been from the moment she’d tied the Yezer to herself. There hadn’t been from the moment her father sold her to demons for a piece of land and a successful accountancy practice. Megan took a deep breath. “Rocturnus, Halarvus must be punished.”

The Yezer relaxed, their silent pleasure floating through the air. Halarvus’s eyes widened as Rocturnus said something in the demon tongue, widened further as he was chained to a frame like the one she’d seen Greyson chained to three months before.

She forced herself not to blink when the whip cracked the air.

This was her life now.

Chapter 18

The white marble floors of Iureanlier Sorithell glowed orange with reflected flames from the torches burning along the walls. The high ceiling, normally white with a dragon mosaic that twisted and shifted, was black. Mystery and power whispered in the dark corners of the entry hall.

Megan stood in her black dress and waited to be noticed, twisting the thin cord of her little silk evening bag between her fingers. Rocturnus perched a few inches above her shoulder, riding weightlessly on the pad of psychic energy all humans had there. He’d been to the mansion only a few times. Normal security kept all demons but family from crossing the threshold, just as it had back at Orion Maldon’s place in Grant Falls.

Tonight those barriers had been lifted. Megan recognized a few faces, other Gretnegs, sipping cocktails and talking quietly. All of them wore black. It was like an incredibly formal Halloween party, except she’d never been to a party that glowed and throbbed with so much energy. It bulged around them all, too large even for the cavernous room, and made Megan’s heart skip faster in her chest. The atmosphere was charged with possibilities, with savagery. This would not be an ordinary funeral.

The empty air next to her shifted, and Greyson slipped his arm around her waist.

“You’re late,” he said, handing her a gin and tonic. She meant to take only a sip but somehow ended up drinking down half of it while he greeted Roc. Still not quite settled from her meeting with her own demons, she guessed, or perhaps it was just plain nerves, or maybe even surprise.

“What are you wearing?”

He smiled. She couldn’t remember ever seeing him this excited—at least, other than in the biblical sense. He fairly vibrated with it, although outwardly he was as calm as ever. “It’s ceremonial.”

“It’s a cassock.”

“Yes, but a demonic one.” He leaned over to kiss her, sending a little shock through her body.

Whatever the black outfit was called, it looked great on him. The stiff, straight collar framed his strong chin and emphasized the breadth of his shoulders, while the snug, severely cut fit and long skirt—there was nothing else to call it but a skirt—made him look taller, as if his body was a pillar of black smoke erupting from the floor. He’d never looked as much like a demon as he did in the uniform of Catholicism. The only thing missing was the white square in the collar; the fabric peeking out from the notch was blood red.

“You look beautiful, by the way,” he said.

“Fu

He smiled and kissed her again, his hand slipping down over her bottom. For a moment she caught a glimpse of how he must have looked fifteen years earlier, when he was apparently cutting a swath a mile wide through the women of the District of Columbia. “We’re going to get started in a minute, so I’ll need to go take my place. Nick’s going to walk with you, okay?”

“I won’t be with you?”

“I have to escort Temp’s widow behind the catafalque.”

“Oh. Well, look, I’ll be fine with Roc.”

“I can do it,” Roc said.