Dates from Hell(113)
“Are there a lot of demon hunters? You have a club or something?”
The look he shot my way would have scared me several hours ago. Now it intrigued me. There was a whole world out here I’d never known about. No one did.
“Rogue means I don’t play well with others,” he said. “I don’t like rules.”
“There are rules?”
“I’ve heard there’s a society of monster hunters. Had a few approach me about a demon-hunting unit. I guess they’ve got government funding.”
“The U.S. government?”
“Hard to believe, isn’t it?”
“After being kissed by a dead man dating, not really.”
“Funny how a little thing like that changes your whole perspective.”
“I wouldn’t call it funny. Why didn’t you throw in with the monster hunters?”
“Even though getting paid would be nice—” he began.
“You don’t get paid?”
“Chica,” he said with infinite patience, “who would pay me?”
“How do you live?”
“Very carefully.” At my frown, he lifted one hand. “I do odd jobs for cash.”
Cash?
“Are you an illegal alien?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” I couldn’t think of anything to say to that. “Wouldn’t it be easier to get paid for what you’re already doing for free?”
“The money would be nice,” he repeated, “but the government would want to know where I’m from. How I got here. What I’ve been up to for half my life. I don’t want to tell them. And I don’t like being told what to do. I ask no one’s permission. I never will. I eliminate evil from this world no matter the cost.”
“Sounds like a good policy to me.”
“I doubt you’d think so if you were part of that cost.”
I stopped and stared at him. “You’d sacrifice an innocent person to eliminate a demon?”
He kept walking, but his answer drifted back on the early morning breeze.
“I’d sacrifice anything and anyone.”
6
S o much for any dreams I might have had about Chavez and me. Not that I’d been having any. I wasn’t that stupid. But I had felt safe with him. Until he’d admitted he’d toss me over a cliff to rid the world of one more demon.
Well, he hadn’t actually said that but I could read between the lines pretty well. Occupational hazard.
“Mind if I use the computer again?” Chavez asked when we returned to my apartment.
The place smelled wet. I opened a window, lit a candle, turned up the heat.
“Go ahead.” I yanked the newspaper out of my mail drop.
“I want to find out who that second guy was.”
“I don’t think you need to.”
I turned the paper in his direction. The face of the man Chavez had lit on fire last night was all over the front page.
He appeared to be missing. Or at least his body was.
“Malcolm Tanner,” I read. “Stockbroker. Hasn’t this demon ever heard of street guys? Their deaths and disappearances would be less noticeable.”
“Would you date one?”
“I didn’t date Malcolm.”
“True. You didn’t even know him. Which might be the point.”
“You lost me.”
“If he picked people you knew, sooner or later the police would be knocking on your door. But random guys? Hard to connect.”
“Why bother setting up a date in the first place? Malcolm just popped in here, uninvited.”
“Some demons need to be invited in first.”
“Like a vampire?”
“Now you’re catching on.”
“But Malcolm—”
“—was the same demon as Eric, just a different body.”
“So since I invited Eric—”
“Malcolm could enter.”
“How do you know this stuff?” I asked. “Is there a www.demonology.com?”
“No. What I’ve learned is mostly by trial and error.” He lifted one shoulder. “A little half-assed, but all I’ve got.”
“You’ve tried salt, fire, silver. What’s next?”
“Holy water, the Hail Mary, the Lord’s Prayer, sacramental wine, the host.”
“I’m seeing a pattern.”
“Christian symbols.” He sighed. “The problem is, there are a lot of demons that aren’t Christian in origin and some that predate Christianity.”
Since I’d studied plenty of ancient civilizations, I was aware of this. Still, the idea that something could predate time as we marked it had always creeped me out. Probably an American phobia. In countries that had been around for a few gazillion millennia, people didn’t get wiggy over a little pre-Christian demon or ten. Did they?