Page 57 of Speak of the Devil
Unfortunately, he didn’t think he’d be able to concentrate very well, not when he couldn’t make himself stop thinking about Delia Dunne. She was the only person who’d ever been over here to visit him — he couldn’t really count the maid service or the gardeners, since they came to the house to perform work he paid them for — and something about the place felt somehow different now, as though the short amount of time she’d spent in his home had changed its energy in some way he couldn’t quite define.
Well, she’d gone home for the night, and he knew he’d sound like a complete idiot if he tried to call her now. They’d had a good talk at dinner, and he needed to leave it there.
Easier said than done.
You’re obsessing over her because she treats you like a human being,he told himself, although he knew it was probably a little more than that. And sure, she was beautiful, but there were tons of beautiful women in Las Vegas. He should know, since he’d sampled a few of them when he first got here, driven by a need to reaffirm the mortal side of his nature and reconnect with the real world.
Delia Dunne wasn’t the sort of person you just “sampled,” though. She hadn’t made a single mention of a significant other, so he had a feeling she wasn’t seeing anyone. For whatever reason, she seemed content to focus on her work.
Had she scared off any prospective partners with the ghost-whisperer adjunct to her real estate business?
If that was the case, then the men here in Vegas must be a bunch of cowards. Caleb knew it would take a lot more than a few supernatural gifts for him to hit the highway. Rosemary McGuire’s psychic powers hadn’t fazed him…just the opposite, in fact.
But that was never going to happen, and he had to deal with it. Maybe fate worked in mysterious ways. After all, if Rosemary had ignored his demon blood and decided to give things a go, he most likely would never have come to Las Vegas at all.
He would never have met Delia Dunne.
So okay, he should take a deep breath and remind himself that all good things come to those who wait.
That didn’t mean the awkward in-between stages couldn’t be a total pain in the ass.
He was contemplating whether he should open another bottle of wine when the first demon came down the chimney.
It happened so fast that Caleb barely had a chance to blink. One minute he was alone in the house, and the next, the anti-Santa Claus appeared.
Ugly bastard, too, maybe a foot taller than he was, with scaly black skin and glowing yellow eyes and a pair of curved horns that poked up through its oily black hair. The second it was upright, it flung itself across the living room at him, claws out and shredding the long-sleeved T-shirt he wore.
Fuck, that hurt. Demon claws always had some nasty stuff on them, and if he hadn’t possessed demon blood himself, Caleb knew he would’ve had to worry about getting some kind of crappy-ass infection from those slashes.
No real thought, just pure instinct as he kicked out, catching the thing in the gut so it released a shockedwhoofof air and staggered back a pace or two.
Unfortunately, Caleb didn’t have a chance to relish that small moment of victory, because a second demon, slightly smaller than the first, also came out of the chimney and hit his legs in a flying tackle that would have done the Raiders’ defensive line proud.
He went down like a ton of bricks, and the larger demon took advantage of his stumble to advance again, claws now reaching for his throat.
At the last second, he rolled, but two of its talons still caught him. Hot blood flowed down his neck. Because it wasn’t spurting, though, he knew the demon had only caught a vein and not the artery that would have spelled almost instant doom.
Still, those fresh wounds hurt just as much as the ones that throbbed on his bicep. The smaller demon’s jaws closed on his leg, but the heavy denim of his jeans protected him from the worst of the bite.
For now. He had a feeling another chomp like that would slash right through the fabric.
He should have borrowed some holy water from Delia. If he’d had even a little on hand, he could have sent these scaly bastards back to Hell where they belonged.
As it was….
Fire flowed down his arms to his hands, and he hurled it against both of them. Because they were higher orders of demons than the imp he’d dispatched in the Bellagio’s parking structure, he knew it wouldn’t be enough to get rid of them entirely.
No, he was just trying to buy some time.
The one that was trying to bite his leg recoiled with a hiss, while the larger of the two also stepped back a pace, its yellow eyes blazing with fury.
That was all the opening he needed.
After all, he who runs away lives to fight another day.
A single blink, and then he appeared on Delia’s front doorstep. He’d wanted to transport himself directly into her house, but because he didn’t know what the interior looked like now, there was too big a chance that he might have appeared in the middle of a wall or some other similarly uncomfortable location.
Whereas the front of her house appeared pretty much the same as the photos he’d seen on the Zillow website when he looked it up, although maybe the front door had been updated.
