“What are we looking for here?”
The question irritated Warren. “This is a bookstore, right? We’re herelooking for a book.”
The glow from the minitorch Naomi used to search with brightened her features and showed her own disconsolate feelings. “I knew that. I meant, was there aparticular book you were looking for?”
Warren reined in his anger. He didn’t want to be alone right now. He didn’tlike being alone and had never done well during those times when he had to be by himself. That was why Kelli still rotted in his sanctuary.
“Any book on Fulaghar,” Warren said. “I need more information about him.”
“How did you know about this place?” Naomi kept the minitorch moving andsearched the shelves.
Even before the invasion, the bookshop had always been only partially organized. An old man had owned and operated the place. He had seemed to have a genuine affection for kids andsometimes performed magic tricks, actual feats of legerdemain and not arcane efforts, for Warren.
As he went to the shelves now, Warren thought about the old man and wondered what had happened to him. He hoped the old man had died quietly in bed before the demons had come.
“My mother brought me here,” Warren said.
“She was interested in the arcane arts?”
“More like she was obsessed by it. All I remember of her from the time I wassmall was her reading these books. I didn’t like them. I saw some of thepictures inside and they… scared me.”
“A lot of these books can be quite intense for the younger mind.” Naomi heldup a book on sacrifices and shined her minitorch on the cover.
The artwork showed several demons gather around an altar made of black marble. A winged demon with an angelic body and scanty clothing held a stone dripping blood in one hand and the head of a man in the other. Intense fear showed on the man’s face even though he had to be dead.
“Of course,” Naomi went on, “several books written on the subject are puremalarkey.”
Warren remained silent and kept looking. He sorted through boxes of books, and though he found some he wanted to investigate further, he didn’t find whathe was looking for. He tried not to feel hopeless, but that was an old unfamiliar feeling that he had never been able to shake. The feeling settled onto him now, ran its tendrils into his bones, at leached away his confidence.
TWENTY
Ultimately, only shortly before dawn, Warren gave up the search. When he left the bookstore he saw the dead man’s body still slumped against the hallway wall.
The acid rain had departed, but the coming heat of the day caused by the Burn had already started making itself felt. The streets were muggy and steamy fog filled the city.
Alerted by the grinding sound of ironbound wheels against the pavement, Warren caught Naomi’s arm and pulled her back into the safety of a nearbydoorway. He held her flat against the door as the grinding sound came closer.
Farther down the street, a horse-drawn carriage rolled through the steamy fog and emerged in full view. Despite all the macabre scenes Warren had seen played out over the last four years, this one was a total surprise.
Six zombies lurched in the place of the horses that would normally pull the carriage. They held on to the doubletree rigging and stepped mostly in unison. The top was pulled back on the cab and the occupants sat for all to see.
Three Darkspawn demonsbroad-shouldered and narrow-hipped, with impossiblylong legs that had two oppositional knees, and a multitude of blue-green eyes set into heads that joined their shoulders without benefit of a necksat in thecarriage. Their scales looked like striations of yellow, orange, charcoal, and red. That coloration marked them asDiabolists among their kind. As such they tended to use both the arcane and technology.
During the invasion, the Darkspawn had become the part of the occupation forces. They kept regular patrols over areas while other demons hunted.
While watching them, Warren had noted that the Darkspawn were insatiably curious and inventive. Where the other demons tended only to destroy things, the Darkspawn explored areas, examined things, and tried to make sense of them. They were also inventive, and made their own weapons.
That curiosity made them even more dangerous. While other demons bored easily without stimulus or fixated on whatever it was they were attempting to do, the Darkspawn thrived on the new and different, and had roving attention spans.
Evidently now the three Darkspawn Diabolists were conducting experiments or amusing themselves.
After they were gone, Warren led the way out of the building and stayed within the deepest shadows as he made his way back to his sanctuary.
Once he was inside his building again, Warren started to feel safe. That didn’t last long when he checked the magical binding that tied him to Merihim.The demon was there, just within reach.
“I have a room for you,” Warren told Naomi.
She and looked at him with a hint of surprise. “I thought I would stay withyou.”
Warren didn’t bother to explain that sharing the bed with someone while hewas awake was a totally different matter than of even thinking of sharing one while he was asleep. He didn’t trust anyone that much.
“It’s a good room,” he said. “We both need a good night’s sleep.”
Naomi just stared at him for a moment, then nodded. “Maybe you’re right.”
“I am. We both need to be thinking clearly later.” Warren walked her to theroom, one of the more upscale rooms in the building. Only briefly did he think about what he was walking away from.
At the stairway, he reached into his shoulder bag and took out one of the Blood Angel eyes he’d cast a binding spell on. He pictured Naomi in his mind ashe held the eye in his demon hand.
“Watch,” he commanded. Then he tossed the eye up into the air.
The eye bounced for just a moment, blinked twice, then floated up into one
