And what if he was right? What if I could catch a glimpse of him through the blood? What if I should drink in order to understand? To see? To learn how to defeat him?
I knew—knew—that it was the bloodlust talking. That I would learn nothing from him but would only sink further toward the demonic side of me. That it was peeking out. Calling to me from where I’d hidden it. Open the door, and the essence would burst through. I’d give in to the nature of what I’d killed, what I’d consumed.
Do that, and I couldn’t protect Rose, much less the world.
Do that, and I really would become that which I abhorred.
And yet my strength was waning. I wanted . . . I craved . . .
And without even thinking, I found myself on hands and knees, moving over the bed toward the scent to Johnson’s blood.
As I approached, Deacon lashed down with the knife, striking the butt end of it against the back of Johnson’s head. Johnson fell to the ground, and Deacon whipped off his coat and tossed it over the lifeless form.
I reared back and howled. I was like an animal, complaining that the hunt had been taken from me, the prey plucked from my path, and like an animal, I snarled at the man who’d taken it from me.
“Don’t,” he said, his voice suggesting that whatever beast might be keening within me was no match for what lived day to day within him.
Right then, I didn’t care. I would have leaped on him, would have attacked without another thought, if Rose hadn’t sprung from the bed to do that very thing. She launched herself at him, moving with inhuman speed, her hands clawed and her fingernails going straight for Deacon’s face.
I grappled to catch her from behind, on the one hand terrified that Deacon had killed the body and all of the monster was deep inside my sister, and on the other hand afraid that Rose would kill Deacon with her bare hands.
“He’s alive!” Deacon said, hands up, feet in a fighting stance. His glasses were still off, and his eyes burned red—and right then I had no doubt that he would rip Rose’s head off if she came anywhere close to him. “The bastard’s alive. I only knocked him out.”
I relaxed only slightly. Rose did not.
“You swear?” I demanded.
Deacon’s lip curled into a snarl. “Don’t you think she’d be the first to tell you if I was lying?”
“This is my sister,” I said, my voice low. “Do not ever forget that.”
“Until we get him out of her, your sister might as well be dead.”
I shook my head, finally letting go of Rose, who crawled backward onto the head of the bed, then crouched there on the pillows, looking forlorn and lost.
“You think that’s her, peeking out, looking scared? That’s what he wants us to see. And the sooner you acknowledge that, Lily, the better this will go.”
“Better?” I retorted. “How the fuck can any of this be better?” I drew in an angry breath, because of course it could be better. If Johnson were out of Rose’s body. If the demonic essence of every demon I’d killed would leave my body in a puff. If Deacon would confide in me and share his secrets so that I knew whether I could trust him.
And if we could lock the Ninth Gate before the demon horde came rushing through.
Accomplish those things, and yeah, things could be better.
But seeing as I didn’t see signs that any one of those things would happen anytime soon, I was reveling in the fucked-up-edness of the situation. Not to mention my own dark pity party.
I pressed my fingers to my head and tried to beat back the blackness. Compartmentalize. Shove all that demonic stuff back into a corner of my mind. One breath, then another. When I felt centered, I faced Deacon. “How do we know he’s telling the truth? How do we know we can’t kill that freakish, mouthless body without hurting Rose?”
It wasn’t a chance I intended to take, but I needed to understand how this stuff worked. And right then, Deacon was the only one who could tell me.
Deacon drew in two noisy breaths through his nose, as if by the mere act of doing so he could calm a rage growing wild inside him. “When a demon invades a body,” he finally said, “it’s generally an all-or-nothing thing. A demon can send a small piece of himself into a human and try to tempt the human to do his bidding. But in those instances, the demon has no voice except inside the mind of the human he’s possessed. Here, that portion speaks.” He nodded toward the body at his feet. “And the body has been robbed of that ability.”
“How do you know all of this?”
He looked at me, his eyes flat.
I licked suddenly dry lips. “Right. So. That means he’s different from, well, other demons,” I said, shooting Deacon a sideways glance.