Interview With a Gargoyle (6 page)

The moment the sun set, Blake shook himself free of the coma-like lethargy and stretched and flexed his cold bones. As he had countless times before, he pushed Percival Blake’s roiling emotions out of his mind, said a brief prayer for the soul of Rebecca Thorne and emerged from his self-made prison cell to join the world for a few short hours of darkness.

Chapter Six

Despite Calypso’s assurances that DeWitt wouldn’t be a threat until sunset, when Melodie returned to her apartment, she locked all her windows and checked behind the shower curtain.

She needed sleep desperately, but now, with the super-sweet latte sloshing in her otherwise empty stomach, she couldn’t get comfortable in her bed or on the couch. Not even the television could distract her from memories of the Gogmar attack.

She tried a hot shower, followed by a sandwich and decaf herbal tea, and she still felt wired. Even with her dark shades drawn, the apartment seemed brighter than usual. The early autumn sun would not be denied entrance through any crack or crevice, reminding her that there was a world outside that she’d missed quite a bit of in the past year since her divorce.

She considered taking a walk, but the blinking e-mail icon on her computer sidetracked her. A little Web surfing would probably tire her right out, so she curled up in her desk chair and dove into cyberspace.

An e-mail from her mom reminded her about the family gathering in Connecticut next month. Another from her oldest brother, Sam, filled her in on the antics of her twin nephews.

Spam offered her cheap Viagra, surefire investments and bootleg software. She dumped all that in the trash bin and opened up her browser with a singular goal in mind.

“Cab-oh-kon,” she said. “Is that with a C or a K? Let’s try C-A-B…”

The search turned up several sites on jewels and lapidaries but nothing relevant other than what a cabochon looked like and how one was made. Next she tried “famous cabochons”, which brought up almost nothing, and finally “cursed cabochons”.

One hit.

The link took her to a website on demonology. The cursed cabochon was mentioned briefly in a small article about the assimilation of objects and weapons. The author mentioned priceless artifacts, magical weapons of mass destruction and enchanted objects being fused into the bodies of humans and demons for safe keeping. It sounded gruesome to Mel, but she read on.

By the time she’d scanned to the end of the article, her imagination ran full throttle, and her hands shook so badly she could barely maneuver the mouse.

She scrambled across the room and grabbed her purse. Calypso would be asleep now like Mel should have been, but Palmer had said to call him anytime.

She had to dump out her purse to find his card, and it took three tries to dial his number correctly. He answered on the second ring.

“Melodie?”

“How did you know it was me?”

“Caller ID.”

“Oh…um, I think I need some help.”

His voice dropped to a deep, concerned whisper. “It’s too early for DeWitt. Have you seen another demon? They’re not all nocturnal, you know.”

“No, no. I think…” She wanted to hang up now and forget the ludicrous notions the Web article had put in her head. It was crazy after all, to think what she thought.

“Melodie, what is it?”

“I think I know where the Cabochon is.”

“That’s great!”

“No, it’s not.”

“Why? You don’t mean DeWitt has it?”

“No. I mean, I think it’s inside me.”

Palmer arrived at Mel’s apartment at dusk. Swordless, he seemed less the demon hunter and more the jock out of uniform, until he shrugged out of his denim jacket and revealed two sheathed daggers and a small, finger-triggered crossbow strapped in a modified gun holster at his side.

Mel stared at his arsenal. “Do you always carry all that?”

“Not always. It depends on what I’m after. Plus, DeWitt has my best sword, and I’ll probably never get it back.” He dug a familiar pouch out of his front pocket and handed it to her. “I probably shouldn’t do this, but here’s some pixie dust. If you run into DeWitt when you’re on your own, it might confuse him long enough for you to get away.”

“I’m
not
planning on being on my own.” She gaped at the shrillness of her response. She’d passed all-out panic a while ago and had settled into thinly veiled hysteria. “You and Calypso have me scared out of my mind about this guy, and now I think maybe I do have exactly what he thinks I have.”

“Whoa. Back up a little.” Palmer set the pouch of pixie dust on the coffee table and scanned the room, hands on his lean hips. “There’s only one entrance here, right?”

She nodded.

“Okay. First of all, take the dust. You never know. It should work on DeWitt. He
is
human, after all, so it might make him forget about the Gogmar encounter and how he met you. Second, who is Calypso?”

“My friend. She works at Gleason’s with me. She’s sort of a witch.”

“A witch witch or a bitch witch?”

“A witch witch.”

“Oh. Wow. You didn’t tell me you had a witch friend. That’s good.”

“I didn’t really know for sure myself until today. Palmer, we’ve got to do something.”

He held up his hands. “Okay. Calm down. We have a few minutes ’til sunset, so sit down, take a deep breath and tell me what happened.”

Mel didn’t want to sit. She wanted to run and hide and forget all this weirdness. “I was looking up cursed cabochons on the Internet.”

Palmer met her gaze with a blank stare. “Okay.”

“The demon queens, where do they keep the Cabochon?”

Palmer shrugged. “In their lingerie drawers? I’ve never met a demon queen, so I’m not really sure. Demons have lairs, caves, bogs, portals to other dimensions, vicious guardian hell beasts. I’m sure they’ve got security covered pretty well. Why?”

“Can they assimilate the Cabochon, like…
into
them?” Reality slowed. Mel could not believe she was asking these questions.

Palmer gaped. “Um…into? Like swallowing or something?”

“Just absorbing it.”

He squinted. “I guess.”

“What about humans?”

“Can a demon queen absorb a human?”

Melodie rolled her eyes. “No, a cabochon.”

“Can a human absorb a cabochon?” His eyes bugged out a little. Mel gulped. What if he said yes?

“I have no idea.”

“But it’s not outside the realm of possibility that the reason we couldn’t find the Cabochon is that I’ve got it. I absorbed it?”

“No!” His adamant denial made her feel only slightly better. “That would contradict the purpose of the spell. The Cabochon was meant to be kept by demons in order to protect humans. Plus, demons live a lot longer, so it doesn’t make sense to—”

“Well where is it, then?”

Palmer shook his head. He crossed the room and put a hand on Mel’s shoulder. “I don’t know, but it’s not in you. Honestly, you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the Internet.”

His touch was warm and reassuring, and Mel began to feel slightly foolish. Lack of sleep had caused her to buy into the hokey legend of a cursed gem. She sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry. It just seemed to make sense, you know? As if stuff like that
could
make sense.”

He grinned. “No problem. I’m glad you called me. I was worried about you.”

“Apparently I need some worrying about. Look, it’s getting dark. I’m supposed to be at Calypso’s. Could you give me a ride?”

“You bet.”

While Mel stuffed her spilled belongings into her purse along with the pouch of pixie dust, Palmer shouldered back into his jacket. With his weapons hidden now, he looked so normal, Mel could almost forget he was a demon hunter.

She centered herself with a deep breath and nodded toward the door. “You first.”

He smiled wider. “Don’t worry. I’m ready for anything. I’ve been doing this since I was sixteen.”

She followed him out the door and turned to lock the dead bolt with her key. “Sixteen? How’d you get started? Was it an after-school gig, like a paper route?”

His complete lack of response had her worried. She’d hoped for at least a chuckle from him. Had he taken offense at her dig about his career choice?

When she turned around, his face was expressionless, eyes a little vacant. “I’m sorry. I just meant it’s an odd thing for a teenager to get involved…”

Mel’s gaze fell to the faint purplish residue on the collar of his T-shirt. “Oh no.”

It was like shooting ducks in a barrel. Blake waited, arms folded across his chest, while Melodie McConnell locked her front door and finished babbling to Palmer. It had been too easy to puff a pinch of pixie dust at the demon hunter the moment he opened the door, just too easy.

He’d never seen Van Houten look better, in fact. The slack jaw and glassy-eyed stare fit the all-American so well. Blake would have laughed, but it really wasn’t funny to see a professional demon hunter go down so quickly.

And besides, he preferred it if pretty little Melodie saw him as intimidating rather than bemused. He made sure his usual scowl was in place when she turned, very slowly, to face him.

“Don’t scream,” he said.

“Palmer…”

“He’ll be blissfully asleep on his feet for another fifteen seconds or so. Then he’ll take himself home, watch the MLB highlights on TV and turn in early. Won’t ya, Palmer?” Blake nudged his nemesis, who nodded blindly and headed down Melodie’s front stoop, ambling like a blond Sasquatch.

“Palmer! Palmer, no…wait!”

“He won’t remember any of this. No point in following him.”

She whirled around. “You stay away from me. I don’t have your cabochon, and I don’t know where it is.”

“I know that’s a lie for two reasons. One, Palmer wouldn’t be hanging around here during prime demon-hunting time, and two, I wouldn’t sense it around you. I’m sure he’s told you all about the curse by now.”

She nodded and backed up, flattening herself against the now locked front door. Her chocolate brown eyes were huge and round, and her delicate hands wrapped white-knuckled around her purse, which she held in front of her like a shield.

“Then you know, part of the irony of the spell is that whoever carries the curse can feel the Cabochon. Just another thorn in a crown of misery, a continual itch, a dull ache so that we can never forget our salvation can be had for the right price.” Uncomfortable with his confession, he shifted from one foot to the other before continuing. “We’re driven to search for it, to spend the precious few hours we’re given each night trying to reclaim our freedom, which is always just beyond our grasp.”

“I don’t have it. I’m sorry, but I don’t.”

“You do.” Frustrated with her denial, he advanced on her, and she shrank back.

On the curb, Van Houten’s Wrangler started up, and the crafty little bakery girl used the momentary distraction to duck away from him once again.

She stumbled down the cement steps and hit the sidewalk running.

Blake sighed. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he could no longer stand being this close to freedom and watching it slip away. He took off after her, determined to get what he wanted before sunlight stole his life from him again.

Mel ran full out, yelling for Palmer to pull over, but he paid her no mind. He took a right on Edgemont where the sidewalks ended, and she couldn’t follow his Wrangler without plunging headlong into rush-hour traffic.

The ominous sound of DeWitt’s heavy footsteps followed her. At least he hadn’t jumped on his Harley. She could never outrun that.

Calypso lived on the opposite end of town in the garden-apartment complex that bordered the railroad tracks. It wasn’t a great neighborhood between here and there, but Mel didn’t know where else she’d be safe. She sprinted through the parking lot of the corner liquor store and climbed through the hole in the fence that had been there since Ricky Cartwright had taken wire cutters to it back in 1985. Voted the boy most likely to escape from prison by her high school graduating class, Ricky knew all the shortcuts through town, and he’d taught a few of them to Mel back in the day.

She’d never guessed there’d be an advantage to moving back to her hometown after her divorce, except that rents were good, and Arnie Gleason offered medical benefits to his night-shift employees.

A passel of feral cats scattered when Mel clawed her way through the bushes that separated the back lots beyond the broken fence. There were no lights here behind Rocket Dry Cleaners and three abandoned row houses. The overgrown yards were small and full of debris that had been torn out of the old buildings as part of Amberville’s slow-moving urban redevelopment plan.

Mel picked her way over a pile of plumbing fixtures and skirted through the side yard of the center house. She’d emerge on Bailey Avenue where Dunbrook’s All Nite Diner would be open and well lit, a safe haven.

DeWitt’s footsteps had faded. She’d lost him for now, but she refused to kid herself. He knew where she lived. She couldn’t spend another night at home until she got rid of the Cabochon.

To hell with what Palmer said. She believed every word of the Web article. The Cabochon was inside her, and she had to find a way to get it out or spend her life running from Blake DeWitt and his witch-hunter descendants.

The fetid aroma of decay overtook her before she reached the gate separating the row house’s narrow, overgrown side yard from Bailey Avenue. She hadn’t seen any cans or Dumpsters in the yards. Everything there seemed to be construction garbage—old wood, torn insulation, cracked toilets and bathtubs.

The stench became overpowering, and Mel covered her nose with her hand and tried to breathe through her mouth.

A hiss of air drifted over her shoulders, and every hair on the back of her neck rose to attention. Whatever it was, it stank like week-old garbage, and it stood directly behind her, slavering and wheezing.

The gate sat less than three feet away, but Mel couldn’t make her legs move. If she screamed now, who would hear her? If she ran, what would chase her?

She opted for both, consequences be damned.

Fueled by terror, she catapulted herself toward the gate, three of the longest steps of her life. Her hands closed over the rusty latch just as something grabbed a handful of her jacket and tossed her against the disintegrating clapboards of the house.