Diana Rowland - Fury of the Demon

As Mzatal looked away, Frank blinked and gave his head a slight shake. He swallowed hard, then looked down at the gun in his hand. His face paled as he hurriedly shoved it into his holster. “Jesus,” he muttered, voice cracking.

I damn near wilted in relief and went ahead and put a hand on the beef jerky display to steady myself. “Paul, go back to the car, please,” I managed. “I’ll buy your snacks.”

He gulped and obeyed with alacrity. The bell on the door dinged behind him as he did a fast-walk to the SUV.

Mzatal was not so pliant and moved toward the deputy instead of toward me and the door and the highway and away from this place and this whole situation. Shit.

“Deputy, he won’t hurt you,” I told the man, watching the struggle on his face to not step back, to not draw his gun as Mzatal closed the distance between them. This was instinct again, a big Alpha Dog putting a little yappy thing in its place, holding teeth around its neck until it shut up. “He won’t hurt you,” I repeated while I silently cursed ingrained patterns of behavior. “I swear it.”

Mzatal paused barely within Frank’s personal space, face utterly unreadable, which was a scary-as-hell expression in its own right. He gazed down at the man for half a dozen heartbeats while the cop firmed his jaw and struggled to maintain control.

Finally Mzatal moved past the deputy, past me, and out the door.

Frank let out a ragged breath as the bell dinged behind Mzatal. His stress showed as he clenched and unclenched his hands, but he didn’t make a move to stop Mzatal from leaving. I hurried to the snack aisle, grabbed a handful of the Krunch ‘n Krackle, then ran back to the front and threw a twenty dollar bill on the counter.

“Keep the change!” I called to the still cowering clerk, then hit the door at a run. “Fucking hell,” I muttered. This whole incident stood as a stark reminder that none of the lords were tame or culturally socialized. Even with Mzatal on super-best behavior, this had been a near-disaster. It chilled me to think of an unscrupulous lord loose on Earth.

I yanked the driver’s door of the SUV open, then stopped dead. Everyone was in the vehicle and belted in, even Mzatal. Except that Mzatal was in the driver’s seat.

I spluttered something that was probably best left unsaid, then took a deep breath. “Boss? What are you doing?”

He gave me an implacable look. “Waiting for you to get into the vehicle so that we may depart.”

I shot Bryce a horrified glance. He shrugged in response and gave me a slightly pained look that clearly said, How the fuck was I supposed to stop him?

“You all need rest,” Mzatal stated. “I will drive.”

Scowling, I shut the door, ran around, and climbed into the front passenger seat. “Fine. Whatever. Let’s get the hell out of here.” I tossed the bags into the back seat for Paul, and remained tense as Mzatal started the engine and pulled away from the pump.

“Paul said the cop freaked out,” Bryce said, lingering tension in his voice. “What happened?”

“Yeah, he did!” Paul exclaimed, already typing furiously on his laptop. “We were just looking at the snacks and all of a sudden the deputy was like—” he dropped his voice to be more cop-like, “—‘lemme see your hands!’” He blew out a breath. “No reports so far. No pings.” He looked up. “What did he say after I left? Did he ID us or what?”

I shook my head. “Not that I know of unless he ran the tags. The SUV would come back to the rental, but Eilahn’s motorcycle is registered to my aunt.” I paused, giving a hard look up and down the highway as Mzatal pulled onto it and headed toward the interstate. “The cop must be sensitive,” I continued. “He really felt Mzatal’s aura.”

“Yes, he is, and he did,” Mzatal stated.

Bryce muttered something foul under his breath then glanced over at Paul. “Anything ping yet? Did he run us?”

“My connection sucks. I’m still checking.”

“Just let us know if we need to watch for anyone coming after us,” I said. Then again, what the hell could the deputy do? He’d pulled his gun for no apparent reason. He might go ahead and run the tags out of curiosity, but I couldn’t fathom him pursuing us. And unless he jotted down the tag numbers as we were leaving, he’d be out of luck since Paul had hacked the gas station’s security.

Still, I continued to check the rear view mirror obsessively. After several minutes of no blue and red flashing lights behind us, I finally turned to Mzatal.

“You’re sure you know how to drive, know the rules of the road, and what route to follow?”

“I have observed carefully.” Calm confidence radiated from him.

Rolling my eyes, I shrugged. “Eh, what’s the worst that can happen. I mean, other than death in a fiery crash.”

His mouth twitched into a smile. “Trust me.”

Apparently I didn’t have much choice. I tried to put out of my head the scene from the movie Starman , where the alien is driving and thinks that a yellow light means Go Very Fast, since he’d seen the human woman speed through a yellow.

“You do know that a yellow light means it’s about to turn red, and you have to stop, right?” I asked, just to be sure.

His only response was a low chuckle.

I allowed myself to relax as we made it to the interstate without any sign of police vehicles following us, and without any crashes, fiery or not. After about ten miles I had to admit that Mzatal knew as much about the operation of a motor vehicle and the rules of the road as the average human, and he certainly had better instincts and reflexes.

Since I still had too much adrenaline pumping through me to sleep, I snagged up one of Tracy’s spiral notebooks from the stack on the back seat and pulled a flashlight out of my bag, propped my feet on the dashboard and began to flip through. It was the notebook with no cover that had all the date and time info for the warehouse node. I’d never actually finished going through this one, since Eilahn and I had raced to the warehouse the instant we realized the “event” was that same day.

Then again, it didn’t look as if I’d missed much. More ritual configurations, some of which looked completely wrong to me. A doodle of an elephant beside another one of the weird tree sketches. A convoluted twisting sigil that didn’t seem to have any logical structure.

I began to toss it back to the stack, then stopped, flipped it open to the page that had all the dates and times for the warehouse node. My pulse did a stutter-step.

“Fucking shit!” I dropped my feet and wheeled back toward the stack. “I need the leather journal with the blue cover.”

Bryce quickly fished the correct one out of the pile and handed it to me. “What’s going on?”

“Node emissions.” I flipped through the fragile pages of the old journal as quickly as I dared. “Idris told Rasha he was following node emissions,” I said. “Tracy tracked the one at the warehouse, which is why we were there when you got shot.”

After a few seconds I found the pages I needed. “Here.” I held the journal and flashlight so they could see. “Six more lists in a really similar format to the warehouse one, so I think those might be for tracking node emissions too. Tracy’s grandparents started these lists, and then Tracy continued and added to them.”

Bryce and Paul leaned forward to peer at the odd lists. Paul frowned and opened his mouth to speak, and I jerked up a hand to stop him.

“Yes, I know there are no fucking locations for any of these,” I said. “All we have are the number series from grandma with dates from her time period, and then Tracy’s cryptic Peter-Piper-picked-a-peck-of-pickled-peppers shit along with the dates he filled in.”