Blood Trinity (Belador #1)(72)
The ghoul shook with excitement. “Yes.”
TWENTY-ONE
Evalle came ready to deal. But it had to be fast.
“What kind of trouble are you in to show up with that and to come out this early?” Grady’s pale form hovered at eye level.
“Plenty.” She sat six feet off the ground on the top of the concrete wall that backed up to the interstate embankment behind Grady Hospital.
Grady’s gaze was stuck on the bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 clutched in her hand. She held a McDonald’s bag in the other. She hated to give him alcohol when she’d rather just feed him, but it was hard to deny the old guy one small moment of happiness.
Rain drizzled off the bill of her Braves baseball cap. The storm that had rolled in at twilight to completely blacken the skies had given her a faster head start tonight, but she only had forty-five minutes until nine o’clock, when she had to meet Storm at the park.
“I’m waiting.” Grady’s eyebrows crawled up his forehead.
She tapped her little finger against the bottle. Monday night rush hour squealed, honked and banged a hundred yards behind her while it sounded as though the god of thunder, Taranis, played a solo backup overhead. “Okay, here’s my offer, and I’ll warn you right now I want quick answers.”
“Then make a quick deal.”
“I am not breaking down specifics. If you want a handshake and this bottle, I want any question I ask answered.” She didn’t demand, just laid out her cards face up.
Grady lifted his chin in his way of thinking and floated sideways into the embankment, then flickered back in front of her. “Things must be really bad.”
Evalle didn’t reply. The less she said, the better her chances were of getting a carte blanche deal, since Grady was one big mass of curiosity.
“All right,” he said. “But only this one time.”
Not a problem, because if she didn’t figure out what to do soon, she wouldn’t have a reason to make future deals. “Understood.”
Evalle jumped down from the wall and landed on the sidewalk as Grady floated down to face her. After giving the area a fast once-over to ensure no one was paying attention to a woman in rain gear and soaked jeans standing in the dark, she extended her hand and connected with his.
“Damn, I hate the rain,” Grady said as soon as he was a solid form. Water shed off him like it did off her GORE-TEX riding gear. “Hand it over.”
“Have you found out who was controlling the Cresyl and Birrn demons?” She gave him the bottle and he twisted the top off and guzzled a three-finger slug of the cheap wine.
Lowering the bottle, satisfaction softened his face. “Not exactly, but I think it’s someone who’s in the city now.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because there was another demon here, a Hindu one.”
Evalle nodded. “A Rakshasas. I heard.”
“I think the same person is controlling all the demons.”
“What or who could be doing that when all the demons should be originating from different power sources? I’ve never heard of such a thing before.”
“Might not be specifically one power behind all of them but a partnership of some sort between two dark powers,” Grady suggested.
She tilted her head to one side. “What would have caused two groups to join forces?”
Grady barked out a sarcastic laugh. “Oh, I don’t know, maybe the bad guys decided to do their own recruiting when VIPER opened an ark for every weirdo with an extrasensory ability.”
“Guess you’ve got a point.” She hooked her thumbs into the corners of her rain slicker pockets. “We had someone tracking the Rak and his master, but the master got away and the Rak ended up repackaged in a suitcase. What do you think the chances are of finding his master?”
“Not good. Not if he’s sending in demons to do his dirty work, and I’m betting those demons aren’t the original forms but some kind of copies. Especially with that Birrn having Celtic markings. You need to find the source of the power for the demons to determine who the master is, but that’s going to be hard to do when you’ve had a Nigerian demon with Celtic markings, a Cresyl demon that is German and now a Hindu Rak. No common denominator. If I am right and they’re all being controlled by the same power, then they’re being sent out with a glamour disguise to hide their true origin.”
“A Fae glamour?”
“No. Some kind of witch spell that disguises the demon.”
Witch, as in Noirre majik? She was back to her conspiracy-against-Evalle theories. “Crud. Can this get any more difficult?”
“In a word, yes.”
That got her attention, because Grady hadn’t been kidding. “Why? What else have you got?”
“An ancient synergy has entered the city.”
She immediately thought of Vyan, the Kujoo she’d seen last night near the Iron Casket, which she’d forgotten to tell Tzader and Quinn about. Crap! That wouldn’t have happened if Tzader hadn’t gotten an urgent cell call from headquarters and taken Quinn with him when he’d left—and if she hadn’t needed to catch up on two days of lost sleep so she could work tonight.
She’d have to start issuing hourly bulletins at this rate to keep the boys in the loop.