Bones cursed in that unfamiliar, higher voice and swore terrible punishment if Balchezek continued. The demon ignored that and gave Ian a patient look.
“You’re a lot harder to break into, for one. Only a medium-or upper-level demon can do that, and only under very specific circumstances. For another, we like keeping the status quo. If demons started possessing a bunch of vampires, it wouldn’t take your kind long to amass and fight back. If our numbers get thinned taking you on, then we’d have a harder time fighting our main opponents.”
I inhaled to make sure I hadn’t missed anything from Bones before. “He doesn’t smell like sulfur. Are you sure he’s possessed?”
It would explain how I’d felt like I was dealing with a stranger in Bones’s skin ever since that first morning after Wraith’s appearance, plus his oddly amateur fighting skills and the abrupt reversal in personality when he’d stabbed himself. But I remembered with a spurt of fear the other thing Bones had told me years ago when we’d encountered a possessed human. The only way to get rid of a demon is to kill the host.
“Humans don’t have the power to conceal the sulfur smell when a demon takes over. A demon-possessed vamp would. Besides,” Balchezek made a circular motion from Bones’s face down to his chest. “I can see the demon. She’s right here.”
She? I stared, but all I saw in the area indicated were my husband’s furious features and inches of chains writhing with Bones’s efforts to break his bonds.
“Of course you can’t see her,” Balchezek went on. “Consider it demon glamour. But just like vampire glamour works on humans but not other vamps, I can see through it.”
My head felt like it was spinning. Reversing a demonic spell had seemed hard enough, but this was so much worse. We couldn’t catch a break no matter how hard we tried.
“So several demons decided to pitch their tents in my husband and his best friends.” A mirthless laugh escaped me. “That’s what you’re saying?”
“Nope,” Balchezek stated. “Just one.”
Fifteen
"ONE?” IAN REPEATED with the same incredulity I felt.
“ ‘My name is Legion, for we are many,’ ” Balchezek quoted with an arch smile. “In that case, it was several demons inside one person, but the reverse can happen, too. One demon splits him or herself into several parts and simultaneously possesses different people. It’s tricky to do, though, because—”
“Be quiet or I will kill you!” Bones roared, his voice now totally feminine and unrecognizable.
“—you can only branch off into members of your anchor’s family,” Balchezek went on, flipping Bones the bird. “First you have to be lodged into one person good and tight. That’s your anchor. Then you perform a ritual on yourself to split off into members of their family and remote-control them, but as a split, it’ll make you appear like a blurry facsimile to other demons. And if all that sounds labor-intensive, it’s even harder to do with vampires.”
“How so?” I asked almost numbly.
“For starters, you can only possess a vampire if you were already in him when he was human, then hung on through the transformation into becoming undead. You need to be crazy strong to do that, but even stronger to attempt simultaneous possessions of other vampires. The upside is that if you pull it off, you’re not limited to only possessing your anchor’s human family. You could also go up to the third or fourth generation of your anchor’s siring bloodline. You’d need to stay within close proximity to your undead flesh puppets, though, and keep their attention focused on you, or a vampire might grab the reins back.”
All those stories Wraith kept telling. Was that his way of keeping everyone’s attention on him so he could stay demonically implanted? This sounded too unbelievable even for me, and I’d seen—and done—a lot of freaky stuff in my day. Some of that must have showed on my face, because Balchezek sighed.
“You want me to prove it, don’t you? All right. Let’s get your boy on top again. He’s far enough away from the demon’s main anchor that it should be easier for him to pop up. Now, what would really, really upset him?”
I wished I could call a time-out to assimilate all the different pieces of information being thrown at me, but I mumbled my reply without pause.
“Bones briefly grabbed control when we were flying. He stabbed me, but instead of twisting the knife, he yanked it out and stuck it in himself.”
And said he had to die while he still had her contained. Oh God, Balchezek was right. Bones wasn’t under a spell; he was possessed, and I didn’t know of any way to get the demon out without killing him.
I swiped away a tear that escaped from my eye. Crying wouldn’t do a damn bit of good, and there was no time for it, anyway.
“So stab me,” I finished, squaring my shoulders. “In the heart.”
Ian walked over, but instead of pulling out one of the silver blades I knew he had on him, he yanked me to him.