Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
“Well, that was an utter failure,” Thomas said, with a long sigh.
It was five o’clock when Thomas was able to check in on his little “circumvent Al” experiment. The twelfth floor of Fiendish Headquarters was full of empty offices and conference rooms—and a prison. Not that anybody needed to know that.
The IT guy he’d recruited was at the desk in one of those unused offices. His name was Pablo Escrima, and he was now passed out unconscious, face down on the keyboard. The scanner next to him hummed almost sinisterly.
“How long did he last?” Thomas asked Yagi.
The ordinarily composed Yagi wiped at his sweat-beaded forehead with a handkerchief. “Six hours,” he said, putting his suit jacket back on.
“Six hours,” Thomas echoed. “And he got through how many documents?”
“About a hundred.” Yagi poked at the prone man. “He started showing irritability at two hours, psychosis at four. Any longer than six, he’d be dead.”
“We should’ve stopped at four,” Thomas ground out. If he hadn’t been in meetings, he’d have seen it, and stopped it, earlier. He might have signed his soul to a demon’s team, but that didn’t mean he had to keep earning bonus cruelty points.
Yagi shrugged. “He’s young. He’ll survive. Besides, he won’t remember a thing.”
“I really wanted this to work. We’re cutting it too close,” Thomas answered. “We’ve got hundreds of thousands of these documents, Yagi. For the demons to skim through each page, even with fifty of them… it’s taking too long.”
“Al,” Yagi replied. “He’s the bottleneck.
As long as he’s in control of them, he’s got job security—and a fifty-year guarantee of a sanctuary from those who would do worse than kill him.
He’ll give you just enough to keep you from kicking him out, but he’s not going to give you the chance to cut him loose too early. ”
“He’s that convinced that I’m going to screw him over once the names are found?” Thomas said, shaking his head. “I’ll just sign a contract saying he can stay in The Havens indefinitely, if that’s the case.”
“No,” Yagi said quickly. “You don’t want to give him that kind of power, that kind of protection. You don’t want to be linked with him. You’re trying to extricate yourself from a bad situation, not saddle yourself with a worse one.”
Thomas leaned against the desk. “Al looks like a really old peanut of a man. All he’s asking for is sanctuary from the guys he’s screwed over—guys like Cyril, I imagine. What do you know that I don’t, about this guy?”
Yagi pulled his lips into a tight line. “He’s a demon. Rogue, like his workers, but more powerful because he’s able to create his own construct here.”
“What?” He turned. “You told me he was a consultant. One you trusted.”
“I didn’t say I trusted him,” Yagi said. “I said he could get us what we needed. And he has. But I would never say to trust him.”
Thomas ran his fingers through his hair, rubbing his scalp distractedly. This was bad. This was really, really bad. “If he’s so dangerous, why is he so afraid?”
“Because he shifted himself here, his body is frail. He couldn’t construct a warrior body, as most people who conjure up demon forms do. That’s why he looks like a peanut. If he shifts out or tries to rebuild the construct, he’ll be immediately returned to Hell.”
Thomas frowned, feeling a headache brewing as he tried to remember all the metaphysical mumbo-jumbo he’d studied up on. “If he’s powerful, why isn’t he a demon lord himself?”
“I assume he’s working on that,” Yagi said grimly.
“If he goes back to Hell, he’s going to be hunted by every demon lord who wants him on their team.
The fact that Al has made it rogue for this long says he’s very smart.
The fact that he’s here at all says that he’s powerful.
Don’t ever underestimate him. And don’t promise him indefinite sanctuary.
Unless, of course, you’re comfortable with a prospective demon lord using your condos as home base for his power-building. ”
“Wonderful,” Thomas said, grim himself. “And he was our best option.”
“The scanner idea could still work, however,” Yagi mused.
“Oh? How?”
“Use disposable people.” Yagi said contemplatively. “People that no one would miss. They will inevitably die from the attempts at possession and the insanity that constant contact with full demon script would cause. But we could move through them fairly quickly.”
“No,” Thomas said. “What the hell is a ‘disposable person,’ anyway?”
“Don’t play dumb,” Yagi chided. “It’s not ideal, by any stretch, but we need to be practical. You’ve hired me to regain your soul, and we’ve got one year.”
“There’s another way. We just haven’t looked for it yet.”
Yagi tapped his lower lip with his fingertips. “Your workers wouldn’t get possessed if their souls were signed…”
“No.” Thomas snarled it, then forced himself to back down from his knee-jerk revulsion. “I’m not signing anybody.”
“It’d be temporary,” Yagi said, his deceptively calm voice at odds with the brightness of his eyes. “Once your soul reverts, so would the souls of anyone you had signed. It would be…”
“I said no.” Thomas grimaced. “You set me up with that ‘disposable people’ crack, didn’t you? Trying to sell me on signing on a team?”
Yagi didn’t try to deny it. “If you had a pool of souls to draw from, you’d be stronger,” he said bluntly.
“Yeah, and so would the guy who signed me, remember?”
“He’s strong already. A few more souls will be negligible to him,” Yagi pointed out. “But it could be a game-changer for you.”
“Not a chance.” Thomas gritted his teeth.
I don’t care about risking myself. But I’m not dragging anybody else into this. I’m not worrying about anyone else.
Yagi finally backed down, looking disappointed, if not surprised.
“I warned you—hard decisions are coming. This may be one of them.”
“Just clean this up, and take care of him,” Thomas said, staring at Pablo Escrima’s unconscious form. Then Thomas’s cell phone rang. He checked the screen, noticing it was one of the Fiendish vice presidents. “Yagi?”
Yagi paused, one eyebrow quirked.
Thomas took a deep breath. “I’ll think about what you said,” he muttered, then answered his phone. “Joel. What can I do for you?”