The laugh barked from me without warning. “Point? Sheesh, Reilly, do you ever unwind?”
“Not often, and never when we have demons in town,” he deadpanned, reaching into his desk and withdrawing a handgun. It disappeared under his jacket as he nodded at me. “You head out. I’ll organize backup.”
“Make sure you add a couple of dragons and maybe a warlock or two,” I threw over my shoulder as I headed for the door, my shadow swishing like a cape in my wake. This was one fight I was not going to be late for. “And if I go down? Find a witch called India Winters. Ask any paranormal, they’ll tell you how to find her.”
The shit had hit the fan in a big way. Troy lay on his side and tried not to whimper in pain. His body didn’t seem to have gotten that memo, so the sound escaped anyway, in a strangled murmur against the dusty floorboards.
His body wasn’t his own. It had been transformed into a mass of hurt, each injury inflicted by the demon-possessed sisters as they dragged him into the house kicking and screaming throbbed like a bitch. His gun had been no use at all against their hell-enhanced strength.
Old ladies.
He’d been beaten up by old ladies, and they’d handled him so easily that his male ego might never recover. And he’d all but walked into the lion’s den. Fucking idiot. Given that the demon had manifested as a little old lady at the Kaufman place, a host they still hadn’t identified, he shouldn’t have been surprised it had possessed the Barnett sisters. It just hadn’t occurred to him. All the horror films he’d seen, the demon possessed the hot chick. That was how it was supposed to go. Instead Troy got the one with the old lady fetish. He groaned again. His life sucked.
Right now, though, he didn’t care whether the demon was wearing an old lady or a hot chick. He needed to concentrate, try not to piss himself or pass out from the pain, and find a way out of this. Preferably alive.
Piece of cake. He rolled his head on the floor, forehead against the wooden boards. One eye was swollen shut and his arm was broken in at least two places. Breathing deeply, he struggled to a sitting position, using the wall as a support. Beads of cold sweat broke out across his skin, agony flaring in protest at the movement.
Finally, he sat mostly vertically against the flowery wallpaper, panting as he recovered. His head swimming, he fought the bile rising from his stomach. Everything else might have been out of his control at the moment but he wasn’t throwing up. No way. No how. Holding his arm close to his chest, he scanned the surroundings.
He was in the Barnetts’ dining room. What remained of it, anyway. The door hung off its hinges with a hole in the wall next to it where part of the hall was visible, as though someone had been too lazy to walk the extra few steps to the door. The carpet was ripped, most of it missing, apart from a section by the door.
All the furniture had been shoved to one side of the room under the window. Half of it was smashed or broken, as though it had been thrown against the wall by a giant, one with a hell of a temper. Which didn’t make sense, because the windows were intact. But as Troy was quickly learning, nothing made sense with demons.
His gaze fell onto a bundle of rags by the ruined furniture. Bloodied clothes by the looks of it. Turning his head to get a better look, he squinted with his good eye to bring it into focus.
“It was wearing her.” At first Troy thought he’d imagined the horrified whisper. But then it came again, from his left, the side he couldn’t see out of. “Like a suit.”
He turned but couldn’t see all the way around. He tried to look further but the room swam and he slid halfway down the wall. It worked. Tiffany Clarke came into view. She was tucked into the corner by the fireplace, arms around her knees, and her wide, dark eyes said she was well into shock.
Despite the agony doing its best to derail his thought processes, his police training snapped into place. He swept a look over her. She didn’t seem to be hurt, just scared. He didn’t blame her. The Barnetts were scary enough—but demon possessed to boot? He’d need a change of pants if he were her age. Hell, if they came back, he might still need one.
“Hey, Tiffany. I’m Troy. Everything’s gonna be okay. Okay?”
Great. Two okays. Now he sounded like an idiot as well as looking beat to hell. Real confidence inspiring, huh?
He didn’t expect her to laugh, but she did. High pitched with a manic edge, it was the kind of laugh that had people moving sharp objects out of the immediate vicinity. The tone of hysteria was understandable but he couldn’t do anything about it. She probably had years of therapy ahead of her, if they got out of this alive. All bets were off on that.
“It was wearing her like a jump-suit,” she carried on. “Not one of those cute ones from Liliana’s. You know the ones, with the little studs on the pockets?”
Troy’s knowledge of teenage fashions was limited at best, but he nodded anyway. She was talking and talking was good. Last thing he needed was for her to retreat deeper into shock and be unable to run if they got the chance. Because if they did, he planned on giving Olympic sprinters some competition.
She gave an irritated little shake of her head.
“No, it was more like ugly-ass coveralls. Like workmen wear, but it looked like a grandma.” A tear welled up and slipped down her cheek. “But all over her face. Coveralls on her f-f-face.”
Her speech began to falter, and she looked away. “It unzipped her and...and... and it took her off.”
Troy’s gaze followed hers across the room to the pile of fabric. It couldn’t be the grandmother body at the Kaufman house, surely? It was too flat for a body. But his mind had already latched on to the pale colors, feeding him images of a pair of skin coveralls.
“Shit.”
An old lady suit. He swallowed hard. Anything to keep the contents of his stomach down.
“Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.”
Tiffany moaned and slammed herself backward into the corner. Her face had drained of blood, but the blue-ish vein at her throat pounded like a frantic butterfly desperate for release, visible even to him. She turned to the wall, hiding her face. A low moan trickled from her, the sound of a wounded and terrified animal.
A chill swept the room, the hairs rising on the back of his neck, and a sense of dread almost froze him in place. They were being watched. As a cop, he was used to people watching him. Here? That didn’t bode well.
Turning his head, he locked gazes with the demon in the doorway. It was Gladys Barnett, the elder of the sisters. Correction, had been Gladys. Now it was just a puppet operated by a creature from the pit. He didn’t let his expression falter, despite the terrified noises behind him.
‘‘You’re gonna die, Mr. Policeman,” the demon sang in a childish voice.
It wasn’t a child. Couldn’t be a child, surely? He had no idea how demons aged, but if it was in demon hell, it had to be an adult—one who had done something to warrant being in there.
He didn’t want to think about that. Demons were bad enough, but demons who were bad enough for other demons to lock up? He had a feeling it would make him long to be back in homicide with normal, perverted human killers.
“Yeah? Cool.”
He gave the bitch a blank face, his raised eyebrow merely hinting at interest rather than the bowel-clenching terror that had his ass twitching like a bunny’s nose.