Demon Demon Burning Bright, Whisperings book four by Linda Welch Page A

down the corridor. The glowing tiles confused me,
creating a kind of optical illusion so distance lost all meaning.
Straight as an arrow, the corridor could well go on forever.
    I walked fast for fifteen minutes. My sight
began to blur, a defense against the glowing sameness of the
passageway which by now bore through my eyeballs into my
retinas.
    Thankfully, I reduced my speed or I would
have run headfirst into the wall which blocked the corridor. I
stopped, blinking. Not a wall; I faced a door covered in the same
creamy tiles. With no doorknob or recess in which to slip my
fingers, I put my palms to it and pushed hard.
    The door swung open and I strode through.
The angry honk of a big, steel-gray pickup made me jump back.
Disoriented, I gasped in a breath of air tainted with gas and
diesel.
    My confused periphery vision spied a
sidewalk, but it curved in to the wall on either side of the tall
brown brick building I just left. I’d stepped right into a street.
I backed up farther till I felt rough brick through the down of my
winter coat.
    It could be a business district. Buildings
of white, red, gray, cream and brown brick, three, four and five
floors high, lined a divided avenue straight as a ruler. I imagined
the structures were stores, restaurants and business offices. One
with a long red canopy could be a theater. A tiered rack of
magazines sat outside the big plate glass window of the store on my
left. To get a better view and not risk being run down, I walked to
my right and hopped up on the sidewalk.
    Wispy clouds dotted a pale-blue sky. In the
distance, mountains towered over the city. Traffic whipped along in
both directions. Men, women and families towing small kids strolled
along the sidewalks on both sides of the street, some pausing to
check out window displays. A crowd at the crosswalk opposite me
waited for the light to change.
    I threw my hands up. “Ha ha.”
    I bet someone, somewhere, laughed their ass
off at me. This sure as hell was not Bel-Athaer. Bel-Athaer was a
place of rolling green hills, forests and clean air.
    Damn. I spun, and barreled into
something solid.
    I staggered back to keep my balance and
looked down at a short, annoyed man who climbed to his feet and
glared at me. He bent to pick up his soft, wide-brimmed felt hat
and slapped it on his thigh to beat out dust from the sidewalk.
Settling it back on his shining amber hair, he continued to glare
from glinting sulfur-yellow eyes.
    Reality hit me. Fear rooted my feet to the
ground. Gasping, a sick feeling in my stomach, I met his eyes
across the space separating us.
    His face lost a little of its glow. His
features smoothed and became expressionless. He spoke slowly, tone
flat with no inflection as if he forced the words out reluctantly.
“Forgive me, Lady. How may I assist you?”
    What the fuck?
    Bewildered and intimidated by my
surroundings, my head whipped back and forth from the man to the
street. I was in Bel-Athaer, but a Bel-Athaer I had never seen or
imagined. People on the sidewalk, driving the autos, waiting at a
bus stop - oh my god is that a taxi ? - were demons.
    I tried to speak and croaked an
unintelligible sound.
    He came closer. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch
that.”
    Would telling him why I was here get me in
trouble? “I’m . . . ah . . . looking for the High Lord’s House,” I
said hesitantly, ready to bolt.
    He pointed his index finger at the far side
of the street. “The next bus will take you there.”
    “Thank you,” I managed to say. He nodded and
walked down the street until he disappeared among other
pedestrians.
    Take a bus to the High House?
    I should have known better than come here.
Acting on impulse rarely turns out well for me. But I was here now,
slap bang in the middle of a Gelpha city with transportation to the
High House at hand. I could go back through the brown building’s
door and head for home. Or I could take a bus to the High
House.
    Why did demons have vehicles, anyway? Why
not zip to