“What did you want me to do, shoot him?” Hardin answered.
Cormac raised a brow as if to say yes. Hardin shook her head and turned to the rest of us, focusing on Tina, with the wadded-up cloth clamped on her head. The bandage was soaked red, and blood was still dripping.
“That’s going to need stitches,” Hardin said.
Tina closed her eyes, sighed. “Ashtoreth,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s her name, or a type of demon. But if you want to call her something, it’s Ashtoreth.” That was how the psychic thing worked. Flashes of insight, slivers of knowledge. Hardly ever the whole picture. It wasn’t predicting the future, it was untangling puzzles.
The name didn’t mean anything, but I had a stack of reference books and an Internet connection at home that I was sure would have a listing. But right here we had Amelia, a walking reference library.
Cormac spoke—the words were Amelia’s, more precise, less brusque. “The name is a derivation of Astoreth, a Canaanite goddess cast as a demon by later Judeo-Christian mythologists wishing to discredit pagan religions. Some alchemists and demonologists began to use the term to refer to a collection of female or hermaphroditic spirits. She appears in Milton: ‘With these in troop came Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians called Astartè, queen of heav’n, with crescent horns.’”
I didn’t have the whole thing memorized like Amelia did, but I’d read Paradise Lost. This sounded like the listing of demons, the followers of Lucifer. As if this could get any more ominous. This still didn’t tell me anything more about her. It didn’t give me anything useful about stopping her. She was little more than a metaphor. I couldn’t do anything about it, I could just handle what was right here in front of me.
I
hunted over the ground where Roman and Mercedes had had their confrontation. The place had gone back to desolate and peaceful so quickly, it was hard to imagine that anything had happened here. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find it—but there it was, a dull glint against the pale desert earth. Mercedes’s coin, a bronze circle the size of a nickel, old face and writing barely visible.
“Does someone have a hammer we can use on this thing?”
Cormac did, in the back of his Jeep. As we had with all the other coins of Dux Bellorum we’d found, we put it against the concrete and smashed the hell out of it, until the face and writing were mangled smears of bronze, negating its connection to Roman.
“Okay, now we go to the doctor,” I said, pulling Tina toward the car.
So, we hadn’t stopped Roman, but we’d all gotten out alive. For now, I counted this one a victory.
* * *
WE RECONVENED at a local urgent care. After some discussion, Tina and Hardin went in by themselves, because Hardin thought the whole troop of us would have looked suspicious, and two people could keep their stories straight better than five of us. Especially if one of them was a cop. Not that “tripped and fell” was that hard of a story to keep straight. That was what they were going to say, not “smacked by a demon in the middle of a vampire war.” Damn, this needed to be a movie. No one would believe it.
While we waited for them, the three of us claimed a booth at a Denny’s down the road. The coffee was terrible and delicious at the same time. I had finally stopped shaking from spent adrenaline.
“Well?” I said finally.
“Could have gone worse,” was Cormac’s curt assessment.
I snorted. Technically, he was right—we could all be dead.
Cormac added, “My second shot would have got him if that other vampire hadn’t shown up.”
I let loose. “And what was that all about? What the hell was going on there?” Whatever it was, we didn’t have a clue, and wasn’t that always the case. This was just such a dramatic revelation of it.
“Dissention in the ranks,” Ben said. “We ought to be happy. Maybe the Long Game isn’t as far along as we thought.”
Cormac said, “In case you didn’t notice, if this was a sign of dissention, Roman pretty much quashed it. Him and that demon.”
What all this suggested to me: not only was the Long Game far along, Roman was getting ready for the home stretch, weeding out his own ranks. Our attempt at an end run had failed. And if Roman really was focused on stopping his opposition—
“We have to get back home,” I said. “Right now.”
Chapter 7
FIRST THING, I called Shaun, and got sent straight to voice mail.
“Shaun, call me, it’s important.” I sent a couple of texts for good measure. I called New Moon next, even though it was after closing and no one would be there. I left the same message.
Ben and Cormac had ordered a plate of bacon, but I wasn’t hungry. I nibbled on the same piece because it was something to do.
“He’s probably gone to bed,” Ben reassured me. “Turned off his phone for the night.”