Midnight Moon (Vampire for Hire #13)(37)

        

"Hard to say, lass. I've never seen anything hurt the old boy. I suspect he might power through. He is, after all, immortal too."

"Maybe he can get by with just two heads?"

"We'll have to see, lass. We are in uncharted territory, so to speak."

"Why do you keep calling me lass?"

"It's a good word for a young girl with spunk."

"Spunk?"

"Grit."

Tammy nodded and thought she might understand. It was a compliment, maybe. The jogger smiled, and crossed her arms, and something on her arm moved. Tammy was sure of it. Something dark-a tattoo perhaps-undulated around the arm. She had seen it in her mother's memory, back when her mother had spoken to... the devil.

"You are a clever girl, aren't you?" asked the woman, pacing now just outside her gate. Tammy could see sweat stains around her armpits and nape of her neck. A steady and dizzying stream of strange formulas reached Tammy's inner ear. Tammy did her best to ignore them and push through them, but the strange words and ingredients only seemed to increase in intensity.

"Nuh uh, young lady. It's very rude to read someone else's mind without permission."

"You're doing it."

"That's because I invented being rude."

Tammy wasn't sure she was following.

"Never mind. It was a joke, lass. But let's just be clear: I can never, ever allow you into my mind. Ever. I am certain you would not like what you find there. I am certain it would drive you instantly crazy. Do you understand?"

Tammy wasn't so sure about that. Tammy, in fact, was quite intrigued with what she would find there.

There. Tammy briefly caught a train of thought, and, yeah, it wasn't a pretty one. The entity before her-the entity that might very well be the devil-had come to entice her brother. No, to turn her brother on everyone. Except, yes. The entity before her had just realized he/she might have come across a new target. A potentially better target.

The boy will not give up his father. The boy, at least in this form, scares the shit out of even me. The boy might be untouchable, at least for now. But the girl, ah, the possibilities...

And then the thought disappeared again, to be replaced by a long series of rambling codes and numbers and strange ingredients, effectively blocking out even Tammy's powerful telepathy.

"You heard that, didn't you?" asked the woman, who had resumed her pacing before the chain-link fence.

"You planted those words for me to hear," said Tammy.

Further down the road, a car turned down the street, headed in the opposite direction. Which was just as well. Tammy knew that if the driver looked in his rearview mirror, he would see a dying three-headed dog in her driveway. Oh, and a twenty-foot-tall fire warrior. Tammy also knew, after quickly dipping into the driver's head, that the driver had no intention of checking his mirror and was perfectly content to get off the road and into a shower. 

"So, so, so powerful," said the woman.

"I'm just me," said Tammy, shrugging.

"Well, you, young lady, are the most powerful telepath I might have ever come across."

"That's not true," said Tammy, catching a quick snapshot into the woman's head. Or, rather, into the devil's head. "There was another, long ago."

"Yes. Very good."

"She had a son who was nearly as strong."

"Very, very good, lass."

"It is the same woman who possesses my mother."

"Indeed."

"You want her too."

"I want them all, little girl."

Tammy cocked her head and searched between the streaming, foreign words, words that she was certain were not in use in today's languages. They were, she was certain, a secret language that only a few knew, and fewer still knew how to use.

"So perceptive," said the woman.

"You are flattering me on purpose," said Tammy, for she had caught that as well, although the flattery came naturally to the entity before her. Using people came naturally. And so did hurting them. The entity before her enjoyed hurting them best of all. And if it couldn't hurt them, it enjoyed ruining them. And if it couldn't ruin them, it enjoyed scaring them. At the very least, it enjoyed being in their thoughts. Human thoughts, that was. No, that wasn't quite right. The entity before her needed to be in mankind's thoughts. Without which the devil would cease to exist.

"And we can't have that, right?" asked the jogger.

A picture appeared within Tammy's mind. It involved religion and the afterlife; heaven and hell; sinning and forgiveness; love and hate and fear. In particular, fear of the unknown. But mostly, the picture in her mind centered around belief. Belief in hell. Belief in the devil. Belief in punishment. Tammy understood that the entity currently pacing in front of her chain-link fence like a caged animal, had created an empire of fear. The empire was vast and multifaceted and reached down into the lives of most people, and for that, the entity was most proud and most grateful. Proud because of the work it had done, and grateful because it virtually guaranteed its continued existence.