I’d expected the situation to improve when William was back with us. It didn’t.
As soon as Jonathan’s mind slid into the background and William took over, he started to scream. His arms and legs flailed, his back arched, and the screams rose from his throat one right after another, to the point where I wondered how he had enough air in his lungs to keep it up.
Raphael and Adam put down their candles to try to restrain the frantic demon, but he was fighting so hard Saul had to jump in and help them. Raphael, practically kneeling on William’s chest like a rodeo star on a bucking bronco, kept repeating his name over and over, but there was no sign that William heard him.
Finally, Raphael slapped William across the face. The first slap was light, and William seemed not to feel it. The next slap was hard enough to make me wince, and I hoped he hadn’t just broken William’s jaw. But, to my immense relief, William stopped screaming.
He was conscious. You could tell that by how hard he was breathing and by how desperately he squinched his eyes shut. But it was hard to tell if he was in his right mind or not. Adam continued sitting on his legs, and Saul kept hold of his wrists, although William didn’t seem to be fighting anymore.
Keeping a careful watch on him, Raphael slid off William’s chest and rested a soothing hand on his sweaty forehead. He then traced his fingers gently over William’s cheek, where a bruise was forming.
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” Raphael said softly as he once again transformed himself into Lugh. “I could find no other way to calm you.”
William dragged in a painful-sounding breath. Both Adam and Saul tensed, anticipating another fight, but William merely opened his eyes. He looked up into Raphael’s face.
“Lugh?” he asked, his voice scratchy from all the screaming.
Raphael nodded, and William proceeded to burst into tears.
“You can let go now,” Raphael said to Adam and Saul. Adam let go immediately, but of course, Saul didn’t. Not, I suspect, because he thought William might pitch another fit, but because he didn’t want to do what his father told him to do.
When Saul finally let him go, William turned over on his side and curled into a fetal position, sobbing. Raphael murmured soothing sounds and stroked his hair, comforting him as you would a small child.
“What the hell happened to him?” I found myself whispering, though I hadn’t meant to say it out loud.
Raphael shook his head in what looked like disgust. “I have a feeling Dougal did, indeed, try to kill the messenger.”
William drew in a loud, shuddering breath. “He tried,” he managed to gasp between sobs. “I’d have let him win if I could, just to make it stop.” He started to push himself up into a sitting position, but his whole body was shaking. I think he would have collapsed back into a heap if Raphael hadn’t reached out and supported him.
William closed his eyes again, fists clenched at his sides. “He wouldn’t let up. Even when he knew he couldn’t kill me, he kept trying.”
Lugh had explained to me once that it was impossible for demons to kill one another in the Demon Realm unless there was a significant disparity in power between them. I guess William, being a royal cousin, was too strong for Dougal to destroy. But it sounded like the attempt had been something akin to torture.
“I suppose that means we’re getting to him,” Raphael said. If he’d been speaking like himself, he probably would have sounded dryly amused—like I’ve said before, he’s not the soul of compassion—
but in Lugh mode, he sounded grave and almost sorrowful.
William laughed—an awful, dry, not entirely sane laugh that I feared might turn into another crying jag. “Oh, you’re getting to him all right. I’ve never seen him so enraged before.”
“And does he plan to come to the Mortal Plain to stop me from announcing the truth about exorcism?”
I don’t think any of us were surprised when William shook his head. “He says you’re bluffing. He says you’d never endanger the lives of all the demons now on the Mortal Plain by admitting something that would encourage humans to execute them rather than exorcize them.”
Raphael heaved a sigh and looked grim. “Apparently, he doesn’t know me as well as he thinks he does.” He looked over at Adam. “Call the press conference for this afternoon.”
“This ought to be interesting,” I heard Saul mutter under his breath.
Adam merely nodded to acknowledge his orders. I had a feeling there were many words that could be used to describe the upcoming press conference. “Interesting” didn’t even begin to cover it.
twenty-two
THE PRESS CONFERENCE STARTED AT A LITTLE AFTER three that afternoon. I doubt that Adam gave the reporters much of a preview, but they obviously knew he was going to say something very important, because they interrupted the local programming to televise it. For all I knew, they interrupted national programming as well. After all, it was quite a bombshell he was about to drop.
Andy and I watched in my living room. The tension was getting to both of us, and we hadn’t spoken a word to each other in about three hours. Probably just as well. Tension makes some people act like asses, and I’m one of them. If we both kept our mouths shut, I would have much less chance of sticking my foot in mine.
Adam looks great on TV. I’d seen him give a press conference before, but this time I was struck again by his masculine good looks and by his aura of quiet confidence. He was dressed in a dark suit with a conservative striped tie, his bad-boy qualities completely buried beneath a layer of respectability. It was a side of Adam I rarely saw, and it made it easier to see how he’d risen to such an exalted rank within the Philly PD.
Cameras flashed as he stepped up to a podium that sprouted microphones like runaway weeds. The voices that had been murmuring in the background before he stepped up faded to nothing, as if the crowd were holding its breath to see what he would say. He laid a sheet of paper—his prepared statement—on the podium, then took a quick look around the room. I guess he was waiting to see if anyone was going to try to stop him at the last moment, but no one did.
“Good afternoon,” he said, sweeping the assembled press before him with one last searching glance before he lowered his eyes to the paper on his podium.
“As many of you know, I am a demon. I am Philadelphia’s Director of Special Forces, and am an official citizen of the United States. However, as a demon, I remain a citizen of the Demon Realm as well.
“Just as the United States is governed by individuals with differing opinions, so is the Demon Realm. And just as the laws and attitudes of the United States change when there is a change in government, so do they change in the Demon Realm.
“The Demon Realm has recently had a change in leadership.”
The crowd wasn’t quite so silent anymore, a low, urgent murmur starting up. I realized I’d clasped my hands together in my lap tight enough that my fingers were turning white, and I forced myself to relax.
“Because of this change in leadership,” Adam continued, as if unaffected by the rumblings of the crowd, “I have been tasked with explaining to you a misapprehension that the United States—and other countries—has about demons. A misapprehension that our former leadership fostered and encouraged in an attempt to protect the demons who walk the Mortal Plain.”
The rumbling in the crowd was louder now. If they hadn’t guessed before that a bombshell was about to be dropped, they did now.
Adam looked up from his prepared speech, facing the crowd head-on as the flashes of photos being taken intensified. He swept the crowd with his gaze, then focused on the camera, like he was looking straight through it into the living rooms of all of us who were watching on TV.