Page 29

Like a Damsel in Shi ning Armor

“S top it, Chris,” He lena said.

Not yelled. Si mply said.

She didn’t seem afraid or intimidated by the other man, who still had height and weight on her. Not now. What did a demon—an otherworldly being—have to fear from a me re mortal?

Nothing about her had outwardly changed, but Chris yielded before her, taking an unsure step back. “I just… I don’t want…” he said, then ignored her and turned towar d Charlie.

His husband still stood at the top of the porch with Cindy one step down, being a second-level human wall. With her jaw jutted forward, it was evident she had no intention of letting Chris get past her.

“Charlie, can we just… talk ?” Chris pleaded. “If you let me explain…”

“Why there was a woman wearing my bathrobe in our apartment?” Charlie shook his head, his arms hugging himself as his heart broke. “I can’t. Not right now. And not like this. I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

“You always do that! The second we start to get real about anything, you sh ut down…”

Helena set a hand on Chris’s shoulder.

“Get off me!” he screamed, swinging his arm back to hit her. Rafferty could see in his mind how it was going to play out in that split second. Her head would snap to one side, she’d fall. Rafferty wanted to move but his mortal body couldn’t go that fast anymore. Couldn’t bend time and space to protect her from the pain comin g for her.

And then Ch ris froze.

He stared at Helena, like he had forgotten how to thro w a punch.

There were shouts coming from Charlie and Cindy, but they had no effect on what was happening right there, just above where Rafferty sat. He froze, too, feeling the demonic power bending around them both, burning like ice.

“I’m going to call the police!” Charlie shouted, storming into her house.

“Cindy, stop him,” Helena commanded. Cindy jerked at the command, closing her eyes as she wobbled on her feet.

“I should stop him,” Cindy repeated softly, her own desire to do just that juiced with Helena’s power. She followed Charlie inside, leaving Helena and Rafferty w ith Chris.

“Stop it, Chris,” Helena repeated, setting a hand on the top of his head. “You need to leave for now. Not forever. Just for now.”

Her touch stilled him, and Rafferty knew what she was doing as he watched her fingers sink into Chris’s skull. Demonic power could not overwrite another’s free will. That was impossible. But it could enhance feelings and sensations a human already felt, bring the ones buried underneath to th e surface.

After a few seconds of her touch, Chris’s face twisted into an ugly mask of sorrow. He dropped to his knees in front of them all. A sob ripped from his throat, ugly a nd broken.

“I’m so sorry!” he screeched, adding to the disturbance that had, in fact, brought some of Helena’s neighbors poking their noses out of doors. “This isn’t who I am!”

“Shh. Quiet,” Helena commanded, touching him once more. Immediately, the wailing sound cut off. But he hadn’t stopped crying. Rafferty could see through Helena’s parted legs that Chris continued to sob and wail, but no sound could be heard. She was stilling the sound waves he should have been making, augmentin g reality.

Helena looked down on Chris. Her eyes glowed like twin suns: unearthly, inhuman eyes with no trace of emotion. “You need to leave,” she insisted, not unkindly, just simple facts. Her will was final, and there was no room for ne gotiation.

Chr is nodded.

Then Helena helped him up to his staggering feet, lifting the larger man easily, as if he were a small child. Rafferty tried to get up to help her, but she shook her head. “You stay down. I got this.”

He yielded automatically to her order. It seemed like the absolutely right thing to do. He wasn’t sure he if he wouldn’t have simply fallen over again if he did try to stand. His vision whirled once more, and he closed his eyes to wait for the swimming moti on to end.

Helena walked Chris all the way to his car and sat him on the driver’s side. She stayed, one hand on the door and one on the roof of the car, talking to Chris. Rafferty didn’t look away, deluding himself that he would be ready to spring up if Helena should need him, until Cindy knelt beside him. She set a black bag on the ground next to her and unzipped it but didn’t remove anything. Instead, she took his face and turned it up toward the p orchlight.

“Relax your head,” she encouraged. “Le t me see.”

He obeyed, submitting himself to her scrutiny. She probed his eye very gently, encouraging the lids to pull back. The lower one hurt to do that, but he resisted pul ling away.

“You’re definitely going to have a nice black eye. Eyeball looks fine, if a little red,” she pronounced, then reached into the bag to pull out a small flashlight. She shone the beam into each of his eyes, one at a time, though he wasn’t sure what she was looking for when she did that. Whatever it was, she seemed satisfied as she traded the flashlight for a plast ic packet.

Giving the packet a quick twist, she shook it out, then held it out to him. “Hold this to that eye until it goes numb,” she said.

He obeyed that order, too, surprised to find the packet turning cold. Wanting to ask if it was some kind of magic, he resisted. Every time he returned to this plane of existence, there was some new technological advancement that shocked him. He learned it was best not to ask questions about them unless necessary. This cold packet was something he could simp ly accept.

“I used to be able to take punches better than that,” Rafferty c omplained.

Helena’s doctor friend cracked a grin. “A lot of fistfights in the culinary world? Need help sta nding up?”

“No, I’m fine,” he insisted, but even as he got up under his own power, Cindy offered a steadying hand until he was clearly, solidly on his feet.

“I would sit on the porch,” Cindy suggested, already turning to go to Helena and Chris, who were still talking at the car. She muttered to herself, “I can’t believe I’m going to go patch up that asshol e’s hand.”

“Then why are you?” Rafferty asked as he dropped onto the second step from the bottom, still holding the cold packet in place.

“I swore an oath about it,” Cindy murmured.

Rafferty wondered what sort of oath that could be, but she had moved too far away to make asking easy without shouting the question. It could wait for later , if ever.

“I’m so sorry about this,” Charlie said, and it took Rafferty a second to realize the apology was for him.Helena’s other friend remained at the door, watching what was happening outside while still shielding himself within her house.

The former demon grunted. Helena’s friends were a lot o f trouble.

“Still, I can’t believe he did that. Chris has never hurt anyone before in his life. I didn’t even think he knew how to throw a punch.” Charlie pressed his fingertips to his lips as if he were tempted to chew on them and he was trying to resist, all while shaking his head. “I don’t know who he is anymore.”

“Charlie?” Helena asked, suddenly much closer as she walked up to the porch, holding her phone out toward her friend. “Do you know Chris’s brother’s number? I don’t think Chris is in a state to drive himself safely anywhere.”

“Uh… yeah,” Charlie said, taking the phone to type the number in.

As he did that, a police car rolled up, its lights spinning though its siren w as silent.

“Did you call them?” Helena asked , alarmed.

“No, no. Cindy talked me out of it,” Chris confirmed.

“Oh great. Someone must have called 911,” she muttered, crossing her arms.

“Helena, I’m so sorry. This is all going to bring the BDI back on you, isn’t it?” Charlie interjected, even as his thumbs worked across the pho ne screen.

A second car pulled up and two familiar agent s got out.

“You are sure that this … incident … has nothing to do with the demon?” Agent Archon asked for the doz enth time.

“Yes,” Helena said with tired assurance.

Rafferty and she had been talking to the agents for about an hour, and a light wintery sprinkle of snowflakes washed over them all. Chris sat in the back of one of the police squad cars while his brother, who had arrived twenty minutes ago, talked to the officer standing guard over him.

Charlie stood just within the door, talking to Agent Sophia. Cindy sat on the porch with her medical bag, staring off i nto space.

Helena indicated toward her friends. “This has been an”—she blew out a sigh—“ongoing issue, long before we had… any concerns about th is demon.”

Agent Archon sniffed. “And you don’t want to press charges?” she asked, directing the question toward Rafferty, standing by Hele na’s side.

“No,” he said shaking his head. “He is a sad fool. He’s suffering in a hell of his own making. But if he comes for me again , I will.”

“Fine, fine. Don’t need a whole speech about it,” the agent dismissed, tucking away the notebook she had used to take down the basics of what happened. “Call me or Agent Sophia if you should be contacted by the demon, or any demon for that matter, or if anything else unusual happens. Which you are sure you have n’t seen?”

Rafferty felt the hairs on the back of his neck bristle, but it was Helena who answered. “You mean like the demon I told you I saw at the agency, but you didn’t believe me?” she snapped, which was quite uncharacterist ic of her.

Agent Archon’s eyes widened a moment, then narrowed. She said nothing more but headed over to talk to the police, presumably to talk to Chris and hi s brother.

“I think that is it, let’s go inside,” Helena said softly, and he nodded. His eye still throbbed, and the ice pack Cindy had given him had long gone warm. When they passed the doctor on the stairs, she took in a sharp breath coming back from her long stare. Then silently collected her bag and followed.

When they filed back into the house, they found Charlie sitting at her dining room table, his head in his hands.

“Should we make some dinner?” Helena asked, looking from Charlie to Cindy who deposited her bag onto Helen a’s couch.

“We brought food from Charlie’s kitchen,” Cindy said, shifting back to the door where their suitcases and a couple boxes of food Rafferty hadn’t noticed ea rlier sat.

“I can do it,” Rafferty volunteered, and went to pluck up one of the boxes, with Cindy doing the same with the other.

Helena nodded and went to sit down next to Charlie, but he got up to follow into the kitchen, so she di d as well.

“So they fixed the floor?” Cindy asked as she set her box on a counter. Tapping a foot onto the tile where the lines u sed to be.

“I guess,” Helena said, letting the door fall shut behind her. “I guess in case we get tempted to open the circ le again.”

“But it was a real demonic circle, right?” Cindy asked, crouching down to touch the nonexist ent lines.

“Not officially, I guess,” Helena answered.

“What did you say to Chris?” Charlie cut in before Rafferty could think of a suitable lie about the floor.

“I made a deal with him,” He lena said.