Demons & Djinn: Nine Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Novels Featuring Demons, Djinn, and other Bad Boys of the Underworld Read online

  Only I feared that wasn’t it at all.

  Devin appeared to be of the same mind. He stood there, hands hanging helplessly at his sides, as he stared down at her. Finally, he whispered, “She’s going to die, isn’t she?”

  In that moment, I was furious with him for giving voice to that thought, as if by saying it out loud he could somehow cause it to happen. “No, she’s not,” I shot back, my voice shaking.

  “She is,” he insisted, and right then I was glad that she was more or less comatose. At least that way she couldn’t possibly hear what we were saying. “When I was over at Lori’s house, we were on the computer, trying to get more information. A lot of the sites we went to were down, but we found one with this guy on video saying that everyone who catches it dies, and that the government is shutting down anyone who tries to spread the truth.”

  I recalled that one blonde newscaster, and the way her gaze kept flickering nervously to something — or someone — off-screen. FBI…or CIA…or NSA…agents, standing there and watching to make sure the reporters all said the same thing?

  At any other time, that would have felt like rank paranoia. Now, though….

  “That’s crazy,” I said, although I didn’t sound all that convinced, even to myself. “No disease is one hundred percent fatal.”

  “That we know of,” Devin shot back. Then his face twisted as he looked back down at our mother, at her strangely waxy and sunken features. “Is there anything else we can do? Like, I don’t know, ice packs or something?”

  “Maybe,” I said. It was worth a try. Covering her in ice packs would complete the ruin of her outfit, but I doubted that mattered much at the moment.

  Glad to have something to do, Devin and I went to the kitchen and got out some big gallon-sized plastic storage bags and started filling them with ice. That seriously depleted our current ice supply, but I knew the ice-maker would start chugging away in an attempt to make up the deficit.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked as we zipped up the last bag.

  “Fine,” he said. “I mean, I feel…weird…but I don’t feel sick.”

  That about sized it up. Weird, but not sick. The world was tilting beneath us, but neither of us knew what to do about it.

  I set the bags I carried down on the coffee table, not worried about whether the cold and the moisture would mar the wooden surface. Such concerns seemed miles away from where we were right now. “I want to check her temperature again first,” I told Devin, picking up the thermometer and slipping it into our mother’s mouth. She squirmed a bit, but I held firm, and she subsided. We waited as the seconds went by, and when the thermometer beeped, I was pulling it out before it was even done.

  When I looked at the readout, I couldn’t believe what it said.

  “One hundred and seven point two,” I read as my stomach began to knot. So much for the ibuprofen and the cold towels.

  Devin’s dark eyes were practically round, they widened so much. “That’s not possible…is it?”

  “Well, it’s possible to have a fever that high,” I replied, then stopped there. It wouldn’t do much good to point out that such an unnaturally high fever could result in brain and organ damage…and that there wasn’t a damn thing we could do to stop it, apparently. I drew in a breath and added, “Let’s get the ice on her. Obviously, the cold compresses weren’t enough.”

  He nodded, and I picked up the bags full of ice I’d placed on the coffee table. I wasn’t even sure of the best positioning of the ice packs, but I figured she’d need one on her head, and some up against her sides, maybe on her chest….

  The bag in my left hand went on her forehead, and the one in my right down on her chest. She winced, although her eyes didn’t open. The bag I’d put on her chest shifted slightly, and I repositioned it. “Give me yours,” I told Devin, guessing that he wouldn’t feel very comfortable about setting bags full of ice on his mother’s body. From the alacrity with which he handed them off, I had a feeling my guess was correct. I placed those two on either side of her waist, trying to position them in such a way that they’d get maximum contact with her torso. It was the core that needed to get cooled down. Or at least, I thought that was how it worked.

  She didn’t like it, I could tell — she kept shifting slightly, trying to get away from the cold, but she was so weak that her movements were ineffectual. Still, if she moved around much more than that, I’d have to find some way to secure the ice packs in place. There had to be some rope or twine or something like that in the garage.

  I wondered if I should send Devin out to fetch it. He was staring down at our mother, glassy-eyed, as if not quite able to take in what was happening to her.

  Then I saw the way he swayed on his feet, and a wave of cold that had nothing to do with the ice packs I’d just handled washed over me.

  “Devin?” I asked, and it seemed it took him far longer than it should for him to glance over at me.

  His pupils appeared to have dilated until they were so large that the black almost swallowed up the warm brown of his irises. “Huh?”

  “How do you feel?” I enunciated the words carefully so there would be no chance for him to misunderstand.

  “Um…weird.”

  I went to him and put my hand on his forehead. He didn’t flinch away, which told me something was very wrong. Actually, the clammy heat against my palm told me everything I needed to know.

  When I spoke, the words sounded as if they were coming from very far away, as if someone other than myself was saying them. “Devin, why don’t you go upstairs and get into bed? I’ll bet you’re tired.”

  “Yeah, I am kind of tired,” he mumbled, then turned with excruciating slowness and began moving toward the hallway and the staircase that led to the second floor. I prayed he’d be able to get there under his own power. My mother had been difficult enough to move. I knew there was no way I’d be able to haul 170 pounds of running back up those stairs.

  But somehow he did it, putting one foot hesitatingly after the other, until at last he reached the upstairs hall and stumbled into his room. I followed, giving him his space, and when he collapsed onto his bed, legs hanging off the side, I wanted to let out a sigh of relief…but I didn’t.

  How could I, when I knew my brother had just been handed a death sentence?

  Chapter 3

  I did go in, and untie his shoes and pull them off. Then I waited as he wriggled under the covers.

  “Get some rest, Devin,” I told him, and he gave me a bleary nod.

  “’Kay.”

  Maybe he slept after that, or just plain passed out. Part of me was thinking I should go downstairs and fetch the big bottle of ibuprofen, but what was the point? I’d given some to my mother, and it hadn’t made a whit of a difference. In fact, she’d only gotten worse.

  I couldn’t linger here, anyway — I had to go check on her. Devin seemed more or less quiescent for the moment, so it seemed safe to go back downstairs.

  She hadn’t moved much. The ice packs were more or less in place, except for the one on her forehead, which had slid to one side. I put it back in the proper position, feeling as I did so how quickly the ice had melted, how half the bag was now just cold water. Was that even possible?

  Then again, I didn’t have much experience with how quickly a 107-degree fever could melt ice. If her temperature was even still 107. It might have gone up again.

  Toward the front of the house, the door slammed, and I jumped. Then joy rushed through me as I realized who it must be. Thank God.

  I ran out of the family room and into the hallway, saw my father coming toward me. The relief that spread over his face as he caught sight of me standing there, apparently safe and well, made me feel all warm and happy inside…for about a second. Then I thought of my mother, lying on the couch, silk shirt stained beyond recognition, eyes seeming to sink deeper and deeper into her head with every passing minute, of Devin passed out upstairs, the fever beginning to consume him as well, and not a damn thing
I could do about it.

  Something in my expression must have changed, because my father stopped dead and asked, “Your mother?”

  “She’s in the family room. She — ” And that’s all I got out, because out of nowhere I began to sob noisily, the preternatural calm I’d been able to maintain all day deserting me now that my father was here and I didn’t have to be the strong one anymore.

  He came to me and held me for a moment, letting me cry. No words of reassurance, though; I had a feeling he’d seen enough today to know there was nothing remotely reassuring about our situation. Then he said, “I need to see her,” and let go of me.

  I didn’t protest. I was his daughter, but she was his wife.

  When I paused in the doorway to the family room, I could see my father standing a few feet away from the couch, his head bowed. His hands hung at his sides, clenched into fists.

  “I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I gave her some ibuprofen, but that didn’t seem to work. Then I thought maybe the ice — ” I let the words break off there. Nothing was working, and now Devin was sick, too, and right then I didn’t have the ability to pile more bad news on my father. Not with that non-expression on his face, the one I’d seen a few times when he was desperately attempting to keep the world from knowing how badly he really was hurting.

  He didn’t move. At first I wasn’t sure he was going to answer me, but then he said, “It’ll slow it down, but it won’t stop it.”

  His tone was so final that I couldn’t help asking, “How do you know?”

  Another one of those short, painful silences. “Because I’ve been out in it all day. Seeing people collapse in the street. Taking others to the hospital in my cruiser because the ambulances were either busy or already out of commission, their drivers just as incapacitated as everyone else. Even Josh — ” His voice didn’t exactly break, but from the way he stopped himself, I got the impression it was about to.

  Josh was my father’s partner. They’d been partners since, well, ever since I could remember. For my father to have seen the man he regarded as a brother come down with this terrible thing…. “I’m sorry, Dad,” I said, although I knew the words were completely inadequate.

  “I tried to take him to the hospital. He wouldn’t go. Said he was going to die with dignity in his own house.” Again I heard the faintest waver at the edges of my father’s voice before he got control of himself again. “I had to carry him inside. He was already burning up. And after that, I couldn’t — I didn’t see the point in staying on assignment any longer. Half the force was already sick with this thing and the rest about to come down with it. I knew I had to come home. Home,” he repeated, staring down at my mother’s limp form.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again. Just words, but they did something to fill up the silence. “She seemed okay when I got here. But then….” I bit my lip, knowing I had to tell him about Devin. God, I didn’t want to, though.

  “Then?” he echoed.

  “She collapsed. I brought her in here because I couldn’t get her upstairs. And Devin….”

  “He’s sick, too.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes. But he’s up in his room. He’s sleeping.”

  “Then he’s lucky.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what that meant. “So…what do we do now?”

  “I’ll take your mother up to our bed.” For the first time, he shifted so he could look back at me. “How do you feel, Jess?”

  “Fine,” I said, the automatic response. Then I shook my head, because I knew that was a lie, and I didn’t want to lie to my father. “No, I feel terrible. But I’m not sick.”

  “I understand. I feel the same way.” He turned toward my mother again, gently lifted the ice packs — which were now mostly water — from her, then slid his arms under her so he could pick her up. Her arms and legs dangled, as limp as if they’d become somehow boneless, but she didn’t move, didn’t even make a whimper of protest. Was that a good sign, or a sign that she was slipping farther and farther away from us?

  I crossed my arms and tried to suppress the shiver that went through me. From my father’s expression, I could tell he wanted to be alone to lay her down in the bed they shared, to be with her now even though it was probably too late. I understood that, and yet I still wanted to run up the stairs and be with him, to not feel so alone.

  As I stood there, letting my father trudge up the stairs and forcing myself to stay where I was, to give him his privacy, I heard something. The word was only a whisper at the edges of my mind, and yet it seemed to resonate along every nerve ending.

  Beloved….

  Going rigid, I held myself stock still, wondering where on earth that had come from. At first I thought it might have been my father, speaking to my mother, but I’d never heard him call her “beloved.” “Sweetheart,” yes, and “darling” — but never “baby,” since she always said using that epithet only infantilized women. Such a firebrand, my mother.

  Although maybe that was the wrong word to be using right now.

  Anyway, their bedroom was at the end of the upstairs hall, too far away for me to have heard him unless he’d all but shouted the word. At any rate, it hadn’t sounded like my father’s voice. It was somewhat deep like his, but more rounded around the edges, with the faintest hint of an accent I couldn’t even begin to identify.

  “Who’s there?” I whispered, feeling like an idiot even as the words left my lips.

  No reply, of course. I was only imagining things. No one had ever called me “beloved.” Hell, only one person had ever even told me he loved me. Colin, the boyfriend of my junior and senior years of college. It had taken me a while to realize his “love” wasn’t the kind I wanted — he said those things to keep me placated, to keep me from noticing that he was banging at least two other girls on the side.

  I’d gone to the clinic right after I dumped him and had myself tested for every disease it was possible to be tested for, and I was fine, but that experience had scarred me. I hadn’t gotten past a second date ever since. Third dates were when things could start to get serious, when you might end up in the sack together. So I always made sure to end relationships before they got to that stage. No opportunities for anyone to be calling me “beloved,” that was for sure.

  And then I decided that the stress of the day had gotten to me, and I was hearing things. Or were auditory hallucinations another byproduct of a high fever? I didn’t know for sure; apparently, I hadn’t spent enough time hanging out on WebMD.

  Even though I knew it wouldn’t tell me anything concrete, I couldn’t help putting my hand up to my forehead. No discernible change in temperature that I could tell, which meant I wasn’t running a fever. No tingles or chills or any of the other telltales of my internal temperature being anything other than what it should be.

  I decided that standing there and trying to determine whether I was sick or crazy wasn’t helping anyone, so I went upstairs to check on Devin. The door to my parents’ room was closed, and I knew better than to knock. My father would come out when he was ready. I couldn’t begin to imagine what he’d seen today, and I knew he needed this time alone with his wife. It wasn’t a question of if, but when; the human body just couldn’t survive at temperatures like that. She should be in a hospital getting IV drips and ice baths and Lord knows what else. An economy-sized bottle of ibuprofen and some half-assed bags of ice from the freezer weren’t going to cut it.

  Tears began to prick at my eyes, and I blinked them away. I’d already cried once today, and I knew I’d probably have plenty more reasons to weep by the time this was all over. Or maybe by then I’d be sick, too, and I wouldn’t know what was happening to me. That was one blessed thing about this entire nightmare — once people got hit by that fever, it scrambled their brains so much they didn’t seem to be aware of what was happening to them. Thank God for small mercies.

  I opened Devin’s door a crack and saw that he had fallen into the fitful phase of the disease — twitchin
g and jerking, his forehead sheened with sweat. Even though I knew it probably wouldn’t do any good, I went to the upstairs bathroom and shook three capsules of ibuprofen out of the big bottle in the cabinet there, then pulled a little paper cup from the dispenser and filled it with water.

  Just as I was approaching his bed, Devin’s leg jerked out and hit my arm, causing the water to splash all down my front, soaking the knit top I wore. I muttered a curse, but he didn’t even seem to realize what he’d done, and that was how I knew he must be completely out of it. At any other time, he would’ve burst out laughing at managing to kick water all over me.

  Pulling in a breath, I did an about-face and went back to the bathroom, plucked a towel off the rack, and did the best I could to blot the worst of the moisture from my shirt. Then I refilled the paper cup and went back to my brother’s bedroom, approaching with care from the side so he wouldn’t catch me unawares again.

  That kick seemed to have consumed the last of his strength, because he was lying on his back, one arm flopped over the side of the bed. I went to him and murmured, “Here’s some medicine for you, Dev.”

  The water first, since that had worked well with both Taylor and my mother. He drank, and didn’t protest when I dropped a pill on his tongue and made him swallow, then gave him some more water. I repeated the process two more times, giving him one last sip to empty the cup, my arm under his head to steady him. He did drink, then collapsed against the pillow when he was done.

  Was any of that going to do him any good? Or was I just doing something…anything…to make myself feel less helpless?

  Probably the latter, although I wasn’t quite ready to admit it to myself.

  Since Devin seemed to be sleeping again, I decided I could leave him for a bit. Pulling out the chair and sitting next to him felt a little too much like keeping watch over someone’s deathbed, and I wasn’t ready to do that yet. Also, I’d just realized I was thirsty, too — I hadn’t had anything to drink since I’d come home several hours earlier.