Page 36 of Destined for Dreams
Bartol dug his fingers into the arms of his chair. If she knew about events from that one day, what else had she discovered? There could be a whole host of things she might have learned on a personal or even intimate level. And who knew how the nerou was getting his or her information. Maybe they could project visions of things happening in real time or the past. As he’d discovered with the few nerou he’d met, there seemed to be no limit to the abilities the hybrids might have.
“Why don’t we discuss the demon problem?” Caius asked, changing the subject.
Zoe turned her gaze toward him. “Where would you like me to start?”
“Why don’t you tell us exactly how you discovered the demon and the Gregorian stones?” Caius suggested. “You wouldn’t give me a full answer before.”
“Several months ago, one of the nerou told me of a terrible dream he had.” She turned her gaze to stare out the window. Sheer curtains covered it, but with the bright sunlight it wasn’t too difficult to see out—all the way to the Kama River. “His dreams tend to be real events taking place near the same time, never off by more than a day or two, so I took it seriously.”
Bartol pushed aside his annoyance with the woman. They were finally getting somewhere with the demon, and he wouldn’t miss the opportunity to find out as much as he could. “What was the dream?”
“It was about a strange man in the Ural Mountains east of here. The nerou said he had a stooped back and used a cane to get around. He didn’t appear to be much of a threat at first, but there was a terrible sense of doom about him, and once his face became visible, he revealed evil red eyes. Then the nerou watched as the man dug up a crop of unusual stones. When he described them to me, I had a strong suspicion I knew what they were, but I couldn’t be certain.”
“So you went to see for yourself,” Bartol surmised.
“It wasn’t quite that easy.” Zoe turned her golden gaze toward him. “My source couldn’t give me the exact location, and if not for a training exercise we did out there not long before that, he might not have gotten me close at all. I had to spend quite a lot of my free time over the next month or so going out searching. All I had were a few landmarks to rely upon.”
Caius rubbed his chin. “But you found the spot eventually.”
She nodded. “Yes, and with a little digging I was able to find a few stones the man missed.”
“Other than the red eyes, which we all know could have been a distortion from the vision, how did you know you were dealing with a demon?” Bartol asked. He still found it odd that she was the only one to pick up on the signs and act on them that quickly. It just seemed too convenient.
She gave a careless shrug. “At first, I couldn’t confirm it, but I knew what those stones had to be from old stories I’d heard. And who else would have known where they were hidden thousands of years later except a demon?”
Bartol supposed he could see the logic in that, and a calculating mind like Zoe’s would have put the pieces of the puzzle together quickly. “But how did you know what kind of threat the demon posed? That it was powerful enough that you had to drag us out here to hunt it down?”
Some of the lesser denizens of Hell chose to live on Earth quietly enough no one noticed them. It was rare they could stay more than a few months before someone sent them back—usually a sensor—but it happened enough that they occasionally even left half-breed offspring behind. Most of the supernatural world ignored demons as long as they didn’t cause trouble.
“During that same period,” Zoe began, giving him an annoyed look because he’d dared to question her reasoning. “My source had more dreams and then not long after I found the stones, another of my students came forward who is able to sense when massive deaths will happen in the near future. He has abilities somewhat like a banshee.”
Banshees died off centuries ago, but it was interesting that this was another talent emerging with the nerou. Bartol began to wonder what other things he hadn’t heard about because he’d been too wrapped up in his own shell to care. Lucas and Tormod had both tried discussing the subject with him, but he’d rarely listened. To him, nothing had mattered except wanting to be left alone. He’d just been getting by one day at a time, uncaring of the rest of the world.
Bartol cocked his head. “How do you know this nerou’s talents are accurate?”
“Since his arrival, he has predicted deaths in plane crashes, storms, and terrorist events. Once we showed the students how to use the internet, he began tracking his prophecies to prove they were real. Of course, he doesn’t always recognize what he’s seeing since many modern inventions are still foreign to him, so we don’t always figure out the cause until too late—if at all.”
“How far in advance does he see deaths?” Caius asked.
“Anywhere from a few days to a couple of months, depending on the scale. The worse it is and the more deaths that are involved, the greater the notice we get. What concerned him this time was the demon brought about a flu outbreak in a small town in Eastern Europe. A dozen people died.”
Bartol frowned. “Why would he do that?”
She gave Bartol a condescending look. “You don’t have much experience with demons, do you?”
He exchanged a look with Caius. There were things in his past—dark things—that few knew about aside from the male nephilim next to him. If Zoe hadn’t discovered the other side of Bartol through her spying, he wouldn’t tell her. His experience with demons was simply different than hers. Killing something was one thing; knowing what made it tick was another.
“I’m not ignorant of them,” he said carefully, “but I’ve never studied them that closely.”
She sighed. “Whoever this is, it is a very old demon. Some foolish human must have given him entrance to their body, but it takes time to build strength. He’s vulnerable in the early weeks and months, but with each kill he makes he will grow stronger. The only thing slowing him down is the types of sacrificial murders he uses to build magic. It draws attention to his activities, and there is a period where he is drained of power before he resurfaces even stronger. He has to space them out since he is at his most vulnerable directly afterward.”
Bartol mulled it over for a moment, pulling the pieces together. “The Gregorian stones are his security against being stopped.”
“Yes.”
“But what is his ultimate goal?”
She let out a delicate snort. “My guess? Chaos and a chance to take over Earth.”
