Dead Beat(68)

I stared at her for a moment. She looked lovely and sincere and afraid.
She looked exactly like the kind of woman in trouble whom I could never turn away.
"I have no intention of dying," I said quietly. "But you aren't going to be part of the equation."
"If you don't-"
"Save it," I told her quietly. "I know how this works. First I allow you to help with this problem. Then with the next one. Then with the one after that. And at some point I'll need more power for what will probably look like a very good reason and dig up the coin. And then you'll be able to do pretty much anything you want with me." I shook my head. "That's one big, long, slippery slope. No."
She clenched her jaw, her expression frustrated. "But I do not wish you any harm."
"Maybe," I said. "But there's no way for me to know that."
She arched one dark eyebrow at me.
Then, as quickly as blinking, the building was on fire. It rose up in a sudden explosion of heat and flame that engulfed the bare studs on the walls and chewed at the floor. Vicious heat assaulted my back, a searing pain that left me with no choice but to move forward. Behind me the fire roared up higher, and I looked around frantically, suddenly panicked. The only portion of the building that wasn't being swallowed by rising, hungry flame led to the broken window. I sprinted to it, spotted the old iron of a fire escape lattice beneath it, and ducked down to go through onto the fire escape before I was burned to charcoal.
And then the flames vanished, the air became cool once more, and the beat of rain replaced the roar of flame. I stood at the window, one leg raised onto the sill, the rain soaking my chest and my jeans.
And there was no fire escape outside the window.
There was only a long, long drop to the sidewalk beneath.
I swallowed and drew back from the window, shaking. The whole thing had happened so fast. My reaction to the fire had been sheer and naked terror, and even now my hand throbbed with the pain of illusory burns. Ever since that fire I'd had nightmares of more. The illusion of fire had cut straight through to my pain and terror and utterly bypassed my brain.
Which was exactly what Lasciel meant it to do.
"Harry?" Butters called, his voice high and thready. I couldn't see him. He stood back in the darkness of the empty building, and in my mindless panic I had allowed the light of my mother's pentacle to go out.
"I'm okay," I told him. "Just stay where you are. I'm coming."
I lit the pentacle again, and found Lasciel standing next to me, one eyebrow still raised. "That is how you know," she said. "If I wished to kill you, my host, your blood would be seeping from your broken corpse and mixing with the rain on the sidewalk."
There wasn't much I could say to that.
"Let me help you," she urged me. "I can help you defend yourself against the disciples of Kemmler. I can teach you magics you have never considered. I can show you how to make yourself stronger, swifter. I can show you how you might heal the damage to your hand, if you have enough discipline. There wouldn't even be a scar."
I turned my back on her. My heart pounded against my chest as I walked back to Butters.
She was lying to me. She had to be. That's what the Denarians did. They lied and manipulated their way into a mortal's good graces, gradually giving them more power while they fell more deeply under their demonic influence.
But she was telling the truth about one thing, for sure: She could make me stronger. Even the weakest Denarian I had seen, Quintus "Snakeboy" Cassius, had been a certifiable nightmare. With Hellfire to supplement my magic and an enormously powerful being to serve as a tutor and consultant, my abilities could grow to epic proportions.
If I had power like that, I could protect my friends-Murphy, Billy, and the others. I could turn my power against the Red Court and help save the lives of the Wardens and the Council. I could do a lot of things.
And her kiss …  The illusion had all been in my head, but it had been so utterly real. Every detail. Shiela herself had been so thoroughly genuine that I would never have guessed she was an illusion. Indeed, there was little difference, from my own perspective, between that complex an illusion and reality. The feel of her, the scent, everything had been there.
And she had been just as convincingly real in her blond-goddess form beside the hot tub in my dream. Her appearance had to be malleable. She could appear to me as anything.
As anyone.
Some darker, baser part of my nature toyed with that notion for a moment. But only for a moment. I didn't dare let that thought flow through my head for long. Her touch had been too soft, too gentle, too warm. Too good. I'd been without female company for years, and more of that warmth, that pleasing contact, was a temptation too great to allow myself to dwell upon.
I turned slowly and faced Lasciel.
She lifted her eyebrows, leaning a little forward in anticipation of my answer.
I knew how to manipulate and control my dreams-and this manifestation of Lasciel's shadow was nothing more than a waking dream.
"This is my mind," I told her quietly. "Get thee behind me."
I focused my thoughts and my power and brought forth my own illusion of imagination and thought. Silver manacles appeared from nowhere, manifested from my focus and desire, and locked themselves around Lasciel's wrists and ankles. I gestured sharply and visualized her being lifted through the air. Then I opened my hand, my spread fingers out, palm to the floor, and she fell into an iron cage that appeared from my concentrated effort. The door slammed and locked behind her.
"Fool," she said in a quiet voice. "We will die."
I closed my eyes and with a last effort of imagination and will summoned a heavy tarp that fell over the cage, covering it and blocking Lasciel from sight and sound.
"Maybe we will," I muttered to myself. "But I'll do it on my own."
I turned around to find Butters staring at me, his expression almost sick with fear. Mouse sat beside him, also staring at me, somehow managing to look worried.
"Harry?" he asked.
"I'm okay," I told him quietly.
"Um. What happened?"
"A demon," I told him. "It got into my head a while back. It was causing me to experience …  hallucinations, I guess you could call them. I thought I was talking to people. But it was the demon, pretending to be them."
He nodded slowly. "And …  and it's gone now? You did, like, some kind of autoexorcism?"
"Not gone," I said quietly. "But it's under control. Once I knew what it was doing, I was able to lock it away."
He peered at me. "Are you crying?"
I turned my face away, trying to make it look like I was staring at the window while I wiped a hand over my eyes. "No."
"Harry. Are you sure you're all right? Not, you know …  insane?"
I looked back up at Butters and suddenly laughed. "Look who's talking, polka boy."
He blinked for a moment and then smiled a little. "I just have better taste than most."
I walked to him and rested my hand on his shoulder. "I'm all right. Or at least no crazier than I usually am."
He looked at me for a moment and then nodded. "Okay."
"Good thing you came along when you did," I said. "You tipped the demon's hand when you came up here. There was no way it could fit you into the illusion."
"I helped?" he said.
"Big- time," I said. "I think I'm just too used to knowing more than most people about magic. The demon was using some of my expectations against me. It knew exactly how to hide things from a wizard."
An idle thought flicked through my brain at the words. And suddenly I froze with my mouth open.
"Hell's bells," I swore. "That's it."
"It is?" Butters asked. "Er, what is?"
Mouse tilted his head to one side, ears perked inquisitively.
"How to hide things from a wizard," I said, and I felt my mouth stretching into a wide, half-crazy grin. I dug in my memory until I found the string of mystery numbers and recited them. "Ha!" I said, and threw my hand up in the air in triumph. "Hah! Ha-ha! Eureka."
Butters looked distressed.
"Let's go," I told him, rising excitement making tingles of nervous energy shoot through my limbs. I started walking to give some of it an outlet. "Come on, let's hurry."
"Why?" Butters asked, bewildered.
"Because I know what those numbers mean," I said. "I know how to find The Word of Kemmler. And to do it, I need your help."

     
 

      Chapter Thirty-six
The lights of Chicago were still out and the night was growing even darker. The storm had driven most people from the streets, and now headlights appeared only intermittently. The National Guard had set up around Cook County Hospital, bringing in generators and laboring to keep them running while providing a shelter of some sort and a presence of authority on some of the streets-but they were as badly hampered by the lack of reliable telephone and radio communications as anyone else, and rain and darkness had cast them into the same morass of confusion as the rest of the city.
The net result of it was that some streets were bright with the headlights of military trucks and patrolled by National Guardsmen, and some of them were as black and empty as a crooked politician's heart. One section of State Street was sunken in blackness, and I pulled the Beetle up onto the sidewalk in front of a darkened Radio Shack.