Part 7 (1/2)

”Yeah, he was.”

Aggie frowned. Charles heard the question coming, but there was no time to listen to it, no time because his heart tugged and he had run out of death. He said, ”Agatha, I have to go,” and for the first time he felt her own heart scatter toward him-her thoughts, her emotions, a trickle of something deep and powerful that Charlie was too afraid to call love but thought could be the beginning, the baby root, of some terrible wonderful affection. He held on to that feeling, to her heart, and he said, ”I'll be back.”

She said his name, but the car and her face and the world faded and he snapped back to the sandy floor in the middle of his prison. The witch stood above him. Her hair was a different color: burnished copper, framing milky skin. Green eyes this time, but still glittering, hard and cold. She did not have her knife.

”You've been playing me for a fool,” she said. ”You sly creature. You've been running high while I cut you dead.”

Charlie tried to sit up, but the witch placed one small foot on his chest. Her strength was immense, impossible. He could not move her.

”No,” she whispered, as her white robes billowed in the windless room. ”You will not be leaving here again for quite some time.”

”How did you find out?” he asked, because the game was up, and there did not seem to be much point in pretending otherwise. His brothers watched.

”It occurred to me that no one would want to die as much as you, simply for the peace of endless darkness. So I searched for your soul, and did not find it where I thought it should be. Instead, I discovered a very long and winding trail.” The witch traced his chest with her toe, curling her foot around his bone plates, the wiry silver lines of his corded muscles. ”Very long, very windy. And I must say, you are peculiar. Saving a child from the darkness? Pleasuring strange women from beyond the grave?”

”You have to let me go back,” he said. ”Please. Just let me help save the child. That's all I ask.”

The witch shook her head. ”The child is beyond saving. You don't realize, do you? Her captors are not entirely human.”

Charlie grabbed her ankle and twisted. The witch danced backwards, smiling, hair glinting bright and hot. He scrabbled to his feet, stretching to his full height, wings arcing up and up, pulling on his tired, misused muscles. His claws dug into his palms and he said, ”What do you mean, they're not human?”

”Poor gargoyle,” she whispered, still smiling. ”The blood of your kind must be growing thin to not recognize the scent of a demon.”

His breath caught. ”Impossible. They're gone.”

For a moment he sensed a s.h.i.+ver of fear inside the witch's gaze. ”Not all of them were shut behind the gate, my sweet. And those who remained... changed. They never left. They did as your kind did. Lived as human. Thinned their ranks. There are not many left, and they are weak now. So very weak. But a weak demon is still a demon, and you know how much they enjoy pain.” She shook her head. ”That mother and her son don't even realize what they are. All they have are urges, a desire for suffering. Depravity in its very worst form.”

”And they choose to listen to that desire,” Charlie said, feeling the echo of his conversation with Agatha ring dull inside his heart and head.

”They choose,” agreed the witch. ”We all choose, one way or another.”

She pa.s.sed backwards out of the circle drawn in the sand. Light flared around her feet and she said, ”Be good, sweet Charlie. Dream of your little girl and your woman and your days in the sun. Dream of death.”

”No, please,” he cried, throwing himself after her.

The line flared white hot, and he cried out, blind, clutching his burning face.

The witch said nothing, but he heard the tinkle of her laughter as she left the cavern and shut the thick door behind her.

Charlie slumped to the ground. After a time, the burning in his cheeks subsided. His eyesight returned. He stared at himself, at his immense body, all his wasted strength-all while Agatha journeyed alone to save the life of a child who was being held captive by the descendents of real evil. The old enemy still walked.

You lied when you told Agatha there was no such thing as a creature born wrong.

Maybe, though at the time he did not believe excluding demons was such a stretch of the truth.

If Mrs. Kreer and Andrew are part demon, they're also part human. Don't let the witch wrap you up with words. And don't forget, too, that she could be lying.

Could be, might be. It didn't matter. He was stuck here, with no way to help Agatha or Emma.

He thought of the little girl, waiting for him in the darkness; the comfort she had taken from not being alone. And his rage-his unadulterated rage at not being able to protect her from abuse and degradation.

He thought of Agatha, too, going there without his help. She would make do without him-he knew that. She would find some way in.

Charlie stood and looked at his brothers. ”I have to help them.”

But the only way to leave was to die, and he had no weapons. Nothing but his own hands.

And his brothers' bodies. The edges of their wings were sharp.

It took Charlie some time to muster up his resolve. It was not easy.

And when he began killing himself, it only got worse.

Chapter Five.

The winding drive from Seattle to Darrington went much faster than Aggie antic.i.p.ated, but she blamed Charlie for that, because all she could think of-between preparing for her pseudo Rambo-like rescue of Emma-was his voice, his warmth, his touch.

Funny, but it was his voice that lingered heaviest in her heart. The s.e.x he had given her-if that was what it could be called-had been past good, more than extraordinary, utterly beyond Aggie's scope of limited experience, given that she usually shut herself off before things could get too tight. Not enough trust, too much fear that her secrets would be discovered. But here, now? Her lack of inhibition was a total shock.

And yet, his voice. She missed his voice. She wanted desperately to talk with him, and not just because she needed to know more about the house Emma was being kept in, or the Kreers and their habits. She simply wished to hear him speak. To say anything.

You are so ridiculous, she chided herself. Big tough strong woman, taken down by a ghost with a magic touch and a hot, hot, voice.

Well, maybe she was being silly, but that didn't matter. Aggie missed him. The son of a b.i.t.c.h was growing on her. She just hadn't realized how much until his last disappearance. It bothered her, the way he left. It felt like it was against his will.

You don't know anything about him. Not really. All you're running on now is faith. Everything he's told you this far could be lies.

Maybe, but she did not believe that. Call it gut instinct, call it whatever you liked, but she trusted him. G.o.d help her, she even liked him. Maybe liked him a little more than she should. Maybe, even, that ”like” was something stronger. Stronger than l.u.s.t, stronger than anything she had ever felt before.

Oh, how she wanted to hear his voice.

Seattle had grown up and spread out during the years since Aggie had last been there; the suburban sprawl along I-5 as she traveled north was unrelenting, and even visions of the Cascade range on her right did little to alleviate the gray and steel and glitter of encroachment. But then she left the freeway, left behind malls and cookie cutter developments, and wended her way high and higher into a world of rock and forests. Darrington sat at the base of Whitehorse Mountain, surrounded by enough hiking trails and parks to make an outdoors-type weep for joy. Aggie thought it was all very pretty, but she kept recalling Emma locked in darkness, Emma before the camera, Emma being touched, and she had to roll down her window for some air, which was crisp, full with the clean tangy scent of wild things. Sparkling and pure.

Maybe there are gargoyles hiding up here.

Maybe shape-s.h.i.+fters, too. Maybe a whole host of creatures out of legend. The world fairly teemed with mystery.

But still, she wondered. Would it be possible for a gargoyle-whatever that was, since Charlie still had given her no description at all, save for I'm not human-to live as himself in a place like this? Few people, lots of places to hide. At most, an urban legend, able to come and go. It sounded ideal to Aggie.

Then again, given what little Charlie had said to her, being away from people would probably miss the point. If a gargoyle's true nature were one of protection, then the urge to be in areas where such a gift would be most necessary might be great indeed. Even if it was unconscious. Suppressed.

Her cell phone rang. It was Quinn.

”Roland got hold of me,” he said without preamble. ”I guess this is what you were going to talk about last night when you called.”