Page 32 of Dead Beat

“No? Let me spell it out for you: Stop fucking around or I’m going to drag you down to the ocean and see if a demon can drown.”

Theo smiled. His grin was wide and thick with teeth.

Darlington tried to rise, to get between the monster and Alex, but he was too slow. His legs felt loose and weak. He stumbled forward, his thoughts cloudy. As if he’d been fed upon.

Theo lunged, impossibly fast, impossibly strong—then simply stopped.

He was staring at the table, fascinated. In the spilled salt, Alex had drawn a careful pattern: a Solomon’s Knot formation. She hadn’t been trying to reveal the old man. She’d been building a puzzle to distract a demon.

“Clever, not smart,” Alex said as she clapped salt cuffs on the real Rudolph Kittscher and the demon began to howl.

13

Alex studied the young man writhing in his salt cuffs in the warm light of a low New England sun, craning his neck, jaw snapping at the air. He lurched at her and she stepped aside. He stumbled into the wall and thudded awkwardly to the floor, unable to use his arms to break his fall.

She crouched down beside him.

“We’ve got a long afternoon ahead, so you may want to save some of that energy.” She gestured to Darlington. “Chains.”

He nodded and started slowly down the hall, still emerging from the stupor of sadness the demon had caused. Alex felt bad for letting Kittscher feed on Darlington, but she had needed the demon smug, distracted. He had to believe he was winning.

She hadn’t recognized what they were dealing with right away, not until “Theo” had set that bowl in front of the old man who wasn’t really an old man. Then she’d understood that the demon was enjoying himself. He was making a show of offering food and care, but he knew his captive was too weak to reach for the spoon, to cry out for help. He was taunting his prisoner. Alex had spent enough time around casual sadists to recognize one.

When Darlington reached the door, he paused, framed by the gray street beyond. Beside him hung a watercolor of a bear snatching a salmon from a stream. “Thank you.”

“I used you as cover.”

His shoulder lifted the barest amount. “It worked.”

This is the danger in keeping company with survivors. He understood now, in a way he hadn’t before he’d been thrust into hell. They would do what they must.

Kittscher had wriggled to his feet again and charged the open door. Alex tripped him easily. This time he landed hard, face down. Blood spurted from his nose.

“Please try again,” Alex said as she hauled him up by his collar and dragged him back to the sunroom. “This is the most fun I’ve had in a while.”

The salt cuffs were weakening him, but it was clear he wasn’t as strong or as fast as Reiter. She tossed him down in the chair and kept an eye on him as she approached the human husk he’d been draining for who knew how long. Carefully, she pulled his collar aside. No puncture marks.

“Not a vampire,” she murmured, turning back to Kittscher. “So what are you?”

He was calm now. Looking for an opening, she suspected, as he stared up at her, eyes partially obscured by his floppy curls.

She sat down beside the wheelchair. “Theo?” she asked.

He drew a deep breath and his lips parted slightly, but all that emerged was a raspy sigh.

“Blink once for yes, twice for no, okay?”

Blink.

“Your name is Theo? You were sent here by the home care company?”

Blink.

“We’re going to try to get you help.”

Blink.

“I know what he did to you and I’m going to hurt him.”