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kathierif_ficStory Title: Gives You Hell
Author: Kathie
Fandom: CSI:NY
Pairing/Characters: Danny Messer/Lindsay Monroe, Don Flack, Mac Taylor
Gen, Slash, and/or Het: hints of het
Summary: Danny has hidden his true nature from his wife, Lindsay, but when someone tries to kidnap their daughter, all bets are off and Lindsay gets the eye-opener of her life when she finds out that magic, ghosts and demons really exist.
Word Count: 14,884 words
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit made.
Warnings: AU, supernatural phenomena
Author's Notes: written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fantasybigbang. More notes at the end of the fic.
It was, Mac thought with quiet satisfaction, a calm day at the New York Crime Lab, a day when reports could get finished, tests could be done and results could be double-checked without too much stress. Surprisingly, there hadn’t been any major new cases today, and even if the day was still young and all hell could still break loose any second now, and probably would, it was almost peaceful right now.
He allowed himself a satisfied smile and adjusted the microscope slightly. He definitely wouldn’t complain if the day remained this peaceful, he added mentally as he stared at the fiber under the microscope.
The door was pushed open behind him, and words filtered through to him.
“…definitely not.”
Lindsay Monroe Messer, Mac thought, definitely sounded less than enthusiastic about something, and there was a hint of steel in her voice that indicated that Lindsay expected that her wishes would be obeyed or at least respected.
“Come on, baby.” That was the voice of Danny, and Mac frowned slightly. It sounded suspiciously as if Danny was whining, and for various reasons, Mac just didn’t like that tone of voice at all. It set his teeth on edge and made him instinctively want to lash out at something.
“Why not?” Danny asked and crossed his arms over his chest, an unhappy frown etched deeply into his forehead.
“Why not what?” Mac asked and turned away from the cotton fiber under his microscope. As interesting as it was to listen to Lindsay and Danny, it probably was for the best to let them know they weren’t alone before either of them said something they didn’t want the entire crime lab to know. Gossip spread quickly through the lab, carried forth by the techs, quicker than humanly possible. It almost was like magic, how quickly everybody working here knew what was going on; and it wasn’t just limited to members of the crime lab. Nowadays, Mac usually heard it from Don Flack first when Danny and Lindsay had a little discussion in the middle of the trace lab, especially if it was about something as mundane as Danny forgetting to buy milk or baby food, again.
Lindsay whirled around to face him. “Mac!” she said, surprise coloring her voice. Her face turned a pale shade of pink as she blushed. “I didn’t see you there, have you been here for long?”
Mac simply raised his eyebrows, silently pointing out how ridiculous her question had been, and Lindsay flushed even darker. “Yeah, right,” she murmured and snapped on a pair of gloves.
“It’s about Lucy’s birthday,” Danny drawled and leaned his hip against the side of the table, careful not to disturb any of the chemicals there or the evidence that was laid out. His arms were still crossed, and the frown was still on his forehead, as well.
“What about it?” Mac asked and leaned back in his chair, his trace analysis momentarily forgotten.
“We are not going to have Lucy’s birthday party at the lab,” Lindsay firmly said. “By the way, do you have a present, Mac?”
“You wanted to have Lucy’s birthday party at the lab?” Mac asked, surprised by her words. He hadn’t expected that.
“Yes.”
“No.”
Both parents had answered at the same time and were now glaring at each other fiercely.
Mac shook his head slightly. “Why not?”
Lindsay didn’t turn her attention away from her husband. “Come on, Mac,” she said, “I want my daughter to have a normal childhood.”
Danny threw his hands in the air. “Because almost getting kidnapped and killed by an insane psychopath because of a weird fixation is part of a normal childhood,” he scoffed.
Lindsay grew still and silent, and Mac watched as the realization of what he’d just said and what it meant for Lindsay slipped over Danny’s face.
“I want her to have a normal childhood,” she repeated, her voice trembling slightly, but her back was ramrod straight, and then, she turned on her heel and left the trace lab without another word.
Danny sighed.
“Open mouth, insert foot,” he murmured. “Great job, Messer.”
Mac chuckled quietly. “You should probably go and fix that,” he said and nodded in the direction Lindsay had stormed off to.
Danny nodded glumly. “Yeah.” He took a step toward the door. “It would’ve been the easiest thing to do, you know?” he then said and turned again, to face Mac. “She’s going to work all day; I’d pick up Lucy and bring her over, and the cake, and it’s not as if she’d remember it, anyway. She’s just two, you know.”
Mac shrugged. “You never know what she might remember,” he pointed out carefully.
Danny exhaled sharply as his shoulders slumped. “You think she’s right?” he asked hesitantly.
“I don’t know, Danny,” Mac answered. It was the truth. “Maybe she is. Maybe not.”
“Really helpful.” Danny shook his head and half-turned again. “Oh, by the way, you do have a present for her, right?”
“Yes, I do.” Mac was taking his role as godfather to Lucy Messer very serious, and he ‘d spent an entire, very uncomfortable lunch break in a small toy shop with a young shop assistant trying to find the perfect present for a two year old girl. He wasn’t going to tell Danny and Lindsay how stressful it had been – the important thing was that he had a present; a present that Stella had told him was adorable and age-appropriate, when he’d called her and told her about his adventures in gift-shopping.
“All right.” Danny shrugged when Mac didn’t offer any more details about the gift he had picked. “I…I should talk to her before I go and pick up my little girl.”
A happy grin spread over his face at the thought of his little daughter, and Mac couldn’t help but smile a little, as well. Danny’s joy was just that contagious.
“Just her and me today,” Danny added before giving Mac a wave and pushing open the door. “See you tomorrow, Mac.”
“Have fun,” Mac replied and returned his attention to his fiber. The cotton had been drenched in something, he just had to figure out what it was.
Maybe it would help him catch the killer of a young woman and make the streets of New York a little safer. Encouraged, he set to work.
~*+*~
Danny sighed a little as he slung the kitchen towel over his shoulder and surveyed his handiwork. The kitchen was spotless once again, no sign of the epic food fight he and Lucy had had over dinner remained. All traces of mashed potatoes and carrots had been cleaned up while Lucy had been sitting on the floor in the living room and was quietly playing. Danny couldn’t see her from his current spot, but he could hear her, squeaking and laughing happily, a few sounds that could be constructed as syllables and even some actual words occasionally thrown into her babbling.
He had made sure she was free of any mashed vegetables before he had set her on the ground, although he really wasn’t sure how much of the food had really ended up in her stomach. As far as he could tell, most had it had been smeared over the table, the rest of the kitchen furniture and into his hair. He needed a shower before he could go to bed that night.
Shaking his head, he decided that it could wait until Lucy was in her own bed and asleep. Right now, he wanted nothing more than sit down with her, play a little with her and when she was getting tired, he would get her ready for bed and then he could still take that shower and watch some TV before Lindsay came home, and hopefully she would be in a better mood than she had been all day long. Danny had apologized for his insensitive words before he’d left the lab, but he wasn’t sure if it had been enough.
Maybe he should have bought her flowers on the way home, but he’d already balanced Lucy, her bag, and the groceries, and he only had two arms, after all.
He shook his head and wiped the towel one last time over the table before hanging it over the back of a chair and stepping out of the kitchen.
He was grinning and definitely not expecting the wooden block to hit him in the stomach as soon as he entered the living room, but there it was, leaving him doubled over and gasping, more from shock and surprise than from actual pain.
“Hey,” he gasped, “No throwing toys!”
The block fell to the ground when he straightened, and Danny bent down to retrieve it. The wood was polished and warm under his fingers – these blocks had been a present from Sid, and Lucy loved building things with them only to smash them down with a joyful cry, preferably when there was something on TV that Danny wanted to watch.
He straightened again and froze.
Lucy was sitting on the floor in front of the TV, just like Danny had expected it. She was grinning widely, her eyes closed to small slits and her mouth opened in a smile that, under normal circumstances, would have made Danny forget about anything else going on around him.
Anything else, but not this.
The wooden blocks Lucy had been playing with were hanging in the thing air, almost motionless except for the occasional wobbling.
“Lucy…” Danny said, bafflement and shock toning his voice down until all there was left was a soft whisper.
Lucy squeaked and waved a little, chubby arm at him, and one of the blocks sailed slowly toward Danny. He caught it out of the air and swallowed against the sudden tightness in his throat.
This, he hadn’t expected when he’d told her to play with her blocks, but with sudden, sharp clearness he knew he had to do something, right now, about it.
He had to make a call.
He didn’t remember moving, but the phone was suddenly in his hand, his thumb hovering over the keypad.
This, he knew, counted as an emergency, but Mac was probably on a crime scene with Lindsay, and if Danny called him now, Lindsay would find out what was going on.
Lindsay couldn’t find out.
If Lindsay found out about this, everything would be over. She would know he’d lied to her, and she would take his precious, precious daughter way from him and he would never see her again.
He couldn’t let that happen.
Danny took a deep, calming breath, to push back the panic that threatened to press his chest together and prevent him from getting enough air into his lungs, and dialed another number.
Right now, he needed a favor, a huge favor, and there was only one other man, besides Mac, who he trusted with this new-found knowledge about his daughter.
“Don,” he greeted, his voice almost not trembling at all. “How soon can you be here?”
This, he thought while keeping his eyes focused on the display in front of him, couldn’t be real. It had to be an illusion. He had been hit in the head by one of Lucy’s blocks, a block that had been thrown with the angry force of an almost two year old and that hadn’t been levitated by said child. He’d been hit in th head and now he was suffering from a psychotic break, that was all.
Tentatively, he reached out, but it felt real; all he could feel around him was reality.
Genuine reality.
He sighed softly and sat down, cross-legged, in front of his daughter.
“I’d hoped you’d wait a little, you know,” he said quietly. “Would’ve been a lot easier to protect you that way.”
He looked down at the single wooden block and the cell phone he was still holding in his hands before shrugging and letting go of them. They remained floating in mid-air, as if he’d never moved his hands away from them in the first place. Funny, he thought, he couldn’t even remember hanging up on Don.
Lucy squawked happily and crawled into his lap while grabbing at his phone, and Danny pulled her little body close to him and took a deep, carefully measured breath.
“Don’t worry, Lucy,” he promised, his lips pressed into her hair and against her skull. “Daddy’s taking care of you. I promise.”
She made a questioning sound and reached for his phone again, and Danny chuckled quietly and moved it away from her curious fingers.
He didn’t even bother using his hands for it. Instead, he used the powers of his mind for this task.
The phone vibrated, and Danny shook off the daze he’d fallen into and grabbed it, his thumb pressing down on the keypad to accept the call without checking the caller ID first.
“Listen up, Messer.” Don’s voice sounded tinny through the phone, without losing any of its urgency.
“I’m listening,” he promised and pulled Lucy tight against his chest with his other hand.
“Good. Don’t hang up on me again,” Don ordered. “I’ll be with you in twenty, you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“No matter what, I need you to remain calm. Don’t do anything rash, okay, Danny?”
“Okay.”
“Promise.”
“I promise, Don. Just…hurry. I have bad feeling about this.” He didn’t elaborate on the phone what exactly it was that was giving him this bad feeling at the pit of his stomach, but then, he didn’t need to. Don knew him well enough to read his voice like an open book, and even if he didn’t know why Danny had called him so urgently, he knew that it had to be important.
“Twenty minutes,” Don repeated before ending the call.
Danny sighed and sent the phone floating through the air again. All he could do now was wait for Don to show up – wait and think about what would probably happen next, what he had to do to keep Lucy safe, to keep Lindsay in the dark about their daughter.
It was a good thing, he thought with dark amusement, that their wedding vows hadn’t been about being honest, but about being faithful and about him protecting her. Those were all things he could provide his wife with, but if she would find out about this particular part of his life, he wouldn’t even know where he should start his explanation, if she even let him come that far. It was too complicated, too big, and the easiest and best solution would be, and was, to never let Lindsay find out in the first place.
“This is our little secret, yours and mine,” he told Lucy. “Don’t tell Mommy, all right?”
A knock at the door made him look up. “I hope that’s your uncle Donnie,” he murmured as he climbed to his feet. “That was fast, though…he must’ve flown to get here…”
A suspicious frown started to form on his forehead. There was no way twenty minutes had gone by while he’d been sitting there and staring into thin air, panicking about the thought that Lindsay might find out about levitating toys and everything connected to that.
Pressing his forehead against the blessedly cool wood of the door, he concentrated for a split second before looking through the spyhole.
He didn’t recognize the man standing on the other side of his door, and he was sure that he’d never seen him before, in his entire life. Wide-shouldered and muscular under the ratty trenchcoat he was wearing, he looked like a member of a football team. His hairline was receding, and he had his head lowered and his shoulders hunched up, as if he was freezing or trying to avoid getting unwanted attention.
Danny almost snorted at that. The man looked like any other member of a religious splinter group, and Danny wasn’t the slightest bit in the mood to talk about religion right now.
A glance behind him made sure that nothing was floating around the apartment anymore, not in his line of sight anyway, and Danny was already reaching for the door, to open it and tell this man where he could shove his message, when the man suddenly lifted his hand to knock again and a huge wave of uneasiness fell over Danny.
Something wasn’t right here.
The man suddenly froze, his hand still lifted into the air, halfway to the door, as if he’d heard something that had made him stop and reassess his plan. For a split second, Danny allowed himself the wild hope that Don had, against all odds, already arrived, but the man lifted his head, his attention focused entirely on the door in front of him, and every muscle in Danny’s body froze when he saw the man’s face.
The skin was reddened, the way it was when it was getting cold or after exertion or fury. The thing that had made Danny freeze was the man’s eyes.
They were black, the pupils nothing more than two pin-sized glowing red points in their darkness.
A demon, he realized with the part of his brain that was still capable of acting and reacting rationally, a low-ranking demon, bust still, a demon straight from hell, standing in front of his door.
No surprise the guy seemed to be freezing – after the fires of hell, New York in fall was cold, Danny thought, but it quickly became unimportant as he realized why the demon was staring so intently at the door.
He knew Danny was there.
A slow smile curled the demon’s thin lips upward as he balled his still raised hand into a tight fist and pulled it back, his intent obvious. He wanted to break through the door to get to Danny.
Danny whirled around on his heels and rushed back into the apartment, only vaguely aware of the blocks that had risen back into the air, until he reached the closet in their bedroom.
The box he wanted was at the back of the closet, out of sight, and it had a fine layer of dust on it. It was just an ordinary shoe box, a price tag still stuck to one side, and Danny opened while his heart beat a sharp staccato rhythm against the inside of his ribs.
A baseball, an old, broken dream catcher. A ring. Photos of himself and Louie, growing up. He ignored the sharp pain the memories of his brother still brought him. Silver bullets, a little silver cross on a chain, and there, at the bottom of the box, two small bottles, a cross drawn on the label with a thick, black marker.
He grabbed them and broke the seal on the first one while still balancing Lucy on his hip.
The sound of splintering wood made him hurry back into the living room – more space, his brain supplied, which meant a better chance to survive this whole thing for long enough to get Lucy to safety, somehow, even if he didn’t know yet how he could do that. He didn’t even know if there was only this one demon, or if a second one was waiting for him to do something, to swoop in and finish the job – he didn’t even know what the demon wanted from him, in the first place.
However, now wasn’t the time to worry about these questions. He could do that later, if he survived the demon’s first attack.
The blocks clattered to the floor, and Lucy began to cry softly, but Danny couldn’t stop what he was doing to soothe her now. He held her tightly against his side, protecting her with his entire body if necessary, and took control of the wooden blocks himself.
“Greetings, humanling.” The demon bowed his head in a mock-greeting as he stepped into the room. He was grinning, thinking that Danny was unarmed, harmless and easy to overwhelm, and he didn’t even try to appear human anymore.
Reality flickered around him, and the horns became visible; long, curled in on themselves, like the horns of a Capricorn, and Danny took a deep, calming breath and slowly released it.
“What do you want?” he asked harshly.
Sharp, pointed teeth glinted in the light of the lamps.
“Her.” The demon held out a clawed hand, pointing it at Lucy. “If you hand the squishy thing over, I don’t have to kill you.” He tilted his head to the side. “if it helps,” he added, his smile widening, “I’ll try not to kill her.”
Danny knew better than to believe his words, and he refused to listen to the demon even one more second. Everybody knew demons lied, after all.
Wooden blocks crashed into the demon’s solid frame at high speed, all of the fury and fear Danny could muster up behind the forceful push. It wasn’t enough to hurt him, or even knock him off his feet, but the attack had been surprising enough to make the demon stumble back a step. Danny threw a potted plant after the blocks and darted closer as soon as the demon lifted his hands in front of his eyes to protect them from the soft soil.
Danny managed to toss the holy water into the demon’s face and retreat to the other side of the room without getting injured by the demon’s claws, and he watched, chest heaving and muscles coiled tight, as the demon howled and stumbled back, steam rising off his skin where the holy water had come in contact with it.
“This is not the last you’ve seen of me, or my kind,” the demon growled, his hands still covering his face, and stumbled out, almost crashing into the wall as he went.
Danny was too stunned to do more than just stand there, his fingers still clenched around the smooth glass of the bottle, almost half empty now, and around the body of his daughter. He had to get moving, had to get out of the apartment and to a safe place, had to bring Lucy out before the demon showed up again; he had to clean up the mess and fix the broken door…but he couldn’t move a single muscle in his body. Vaguely, he was aware that he was shaking almost violently and that Lucy was crying again – he was sure that she had stopped crying before, but right now, she was sobbing with heartbreaking intensity, snot smeared over her entire face.
“Shh,” he murmured helplessly and forced himself into action. One wave of his hand, and the box of Kleenex was floating close, and Danny started to wipe Lucy’s face and clean up the worst of the mess, but he was still working on autopilot.
When he heard steps behind himself, he reacted before his brain could catch up with his instincts.
“Whoa, Messer!” Don stepped back quickly and lifted his hands slowly. “It’s just me.”
“Sorry,” Danny murmured, too exhausted to be embarrassed, and finally dropped the bottle of holy water. It was empty now anyway, the rest of the holy water now darkening Don’s jacket and shirt.
“What the hell, Messer?” Don asked, a bewildered expression on his face. “What happened here?”
“Capricorn demon, stomping in here and trying to take Lucy,” Danny murmured and stumbled to the couch. He needed to sit down now because he didn’t think his trembling knees would keep him upright for much longer.
“Huh,” Don said and looked down at his wet clothes again. “And you managed to fight it off with holy water and a fern?”
“Don’t forget Lucy’s blocks,” Danny added. Lucy’s sobs had finally calmed down to an occasional hiccup every now and then, and he looked up at Don with a small frown. “I know it sounds ridiculous…”
“Huh,” Don said again and crossed his arms over his chest. “Not if you surprised him. What’s more interesting is – what is a class-two-demon from hell doing in your apartment in the first place, Messer?”
Danny shook his head numbly. “Lucy,” he murmured. “She…I caught her levitating those damn blocks, Don. Levitating, man.”
“Levitating, as in, telekinesis?” Don asked and came to sit next to him.
“Yeah.”
“A skill usually developed a little later than two years?”
“Yeah.”
“Does Mac know?”
“No.”
“Were you planning on telling him?”
“Don’t know. Yeah.” Danny ran his hand over his face. His fingers were still shaking almost violently, and he didn’t fight when Don closed his own fingers gently around them, stilling the tremors.
“We should tell him now,” Don said quietly. “Come on. I’ll drive. This is something Mac needs to know.”
Danny didn’t protest.
~*+*~
“Mac?” Don still had his hand on Danny’s elbow, guiding him and making sure he didn’t stumble, as they reached Mac’s office.
Mac looked up with a little frown that only deepened when he saw Danny and the state he was in.
“What happened?”
Danny shook his head and sat down heavily. “Lindsay?” he asked hoarsely.
“She’s at a scene,” Mac answered. “Do you want me to call her?”
Danny shook hi s head and closed his eyes briefly. “Please don’t,” he said softly. “I don’t her involved in this.” He looked up at Mac. “She can’t find out. Not like this.”
“Find out?” Mac asked and came to sit next to Danny while giving Don a puzzled look. His voice was pitched low and soothing, the voice he used when talking to the victims at crime scenes, Danny thought, and it made him realize just how shaken he probably had to look.
But then, a class-two demon had just attacked him in his own home, and he’d survived the attack without getting injured – he was allowed to fall apart a little, although Don had done his best to keep the pieces together, once again.
“Danny just had an encounter of the third kind,” Don jumped in with an explanation when it was obvious that Danny wouldn’t answer. His hand brushed against Danny’s briefly, a soothing touch that made Danny immediately feel better. “Capricorn demon, trying to grab Lucy.”
Danny felt another tremor run through him at Don’s calm words, despite the other man’s calming touch and despite knowing that he was safe with Mac and him. They would protect him and Lucy, plus, he had fought off a demon on his own, he wasn’t exactly helpless…
Mac squeezed the back of his neck, and the panic welling up in him slowly dissipated again.
“A Capricorn demon?” he repeated questioningly.
Danny nodded and finally looked up. “Yeah,” he confirmed, his voice rough. “He looked just like that guy over there.”
His muscles tensed again as he nodded toward the man in the dark trench coat who just made his way toward them. Mac recognized him immediately, but he didn’t know how the demon had managed to get on this level – it was protected, in more than just one way, with spells so complicated and intricate that some of the demons that were allowed in the lab sometimes asked to leave early because of migraines.
“What the hell?” Don murmured. He’d seen and recognized the demon as well. “Someone must’ve promised these guys heaven and hell for Lucy.”
“Or they are pissed off because of their friend,” Danny found himself answering.
Don gave him a sideways glance. “Well, I could understand that,” he quipped, “Holy water is a bitch to get out of clothes.”
Mac snorted and stood, to await the demon.
“Humanling,” the demon greeted as he pushed the door to Mac’s office open. “Step aside.”
Mac shook his head. “You know I can’t do that,” he pointed out calmly and took a step toward him. “But you can tell me who sent you and what they want.”
Again, reality rippled, and the demon’s human appearance fell away, like a layer that was slowly being peeled off. The curled horns on this one’s head were much bigger, and Danny had the sinking feeling that it wouldn’t be as easy to get rid of this one as it had been with the last one.
However, Mac didn’t seem to be impressed.
“Who sent you?” he barked at the demon, his eyes focused on the creature.
The demon shook itself, like a wet dog. “Nobody paid us,” he replied, “But we were promised a reward. For the little squishy thing.”
“What kind of reward?” Mac asked and took another step toward the demon who threw his head back and laughed.
“That is between him and us,” he pointed out, “and none of your concern.” His hands moved, fast enough to be nothing but a blur, and sharp claws whistled through the air. However, Mac had anticipated the attack and was already moving out of the way. He wasn’t attacking the demon, like Danny would have done, and was taking a step back instead.
“If I match his offer, will you let us be?” he asked.
The demon snorted. “You will not be able to match his offer, humanling,” he said. “He has the key.”
He reached out for Mac again, but at the last second, he changed his attack and its direction. His claws brushed against Mac’s sleeve, and the sound of ripping fabric was loud in the office. The demon charged again, carefully staying out of Mac’s range, and slashed in his direction again, aiming for Mac’s throat.
Before he could make contact,, the air in the room suddenly shifted, and the demon froze, mid-movement. He growled once he realized what had happened – instead of fighting him physically, like Danny would have done, Mac had taken the fight to another level and had him pinned with the power of his mind alone.
“What did he promise you?” he asked again. His teeth were clenched tight, and sweat was starting to form along his hairline.
The demon managed a grin. “He promised us home,” he snarled and squirmed. Mac still had him pinned, but it became increasingly difficult to maintain control and he was running out quickly. The more the demon fought against the invisible grip, the sooner he would be free.
Mac felt the burn of sweat in his eyes, but he didn’t blink. His muscles started to tremble, and he knew that he couldn’t fight this demon for much longer. It was an old one, experienced and patient, and it was determined to fulfill his job and get his reward.
Mac grunted softly. The demon’s smile turned malicious.
“You’re not bad, for a humanling,” the demon admitted, his voice turning into a low, raspy growl. “I would take your deal if there was any chance you might be able to keep your end of it.”
He shrugged, the movement small and almost imperceptible, and Mac knew he was seconds from breaking free.
“Danny. Run,” he ordered sharply – something he should’ve done before, but he had needed to keep all of his focus on the demon and Danny, who knew what was going on, had kept silent to avoid distracting Mac.
He heard movement behind him, the shuffling of Danny’s feet as he moved toward the door, and suddenly, Lucy made a questioning sound – a sound that broke the last straw of control Mac had over himself.
The demon rushed two steps toward him, his claws reaching for Mac, when suddenly, a wave of heat brushed past Mac. He felt the small pinprick of the tips of sharp claws penetrating his skin as they reached his chest, but instead of burning pain, he only experienced an unbelievable heat.
The demon burst into fire in front of him, a look of surprise on his face, and then, all that was left of him was a cloud of ash and smoke.
Mac swallowed thickly. “Danny?” he croaked.
“It wasn’t me,” Danny answered. His voice sounded dazed.
Don coughed and waved a hand in front of his face. “Lucy,” he said. His voice was quiet, but in the sudden silence of Mac’s office, late at night, it was almost deafening.
Mac pulled his shirt away from his chest and inspected the damage done to it. Seven little puncture holes were in it, right over his chest, where the demon’s claws had been.
“Did you just send the demon back to hell?” Danny asked the little girl still in his arms, disbelief and amazement coloring his shaking voice. “That’s Daddy’s little girl, right there.”
Mac coughed and sat down behind his desk. “Daddy’s little girl almost set my lab on fire,” he pointed out dryly.
Danny shrugged. “There was a demon in there,” he answered. “She was only trying to save your life, Mac.”
Mac took a deep breath. The whole absurdity of the situation almost made him laugh out loud, but he managed to keep a straight face, no matter how hard it was.
“There usually are demons in the lab,” he pointed out and pulled open a drawer of his desk. The power Lucy had displayed was alarming, and Mac had a strong suspicion that it was the reason why these Capricorn demons were interested in her – no, he corrected himself, why the mysterious stranger who had sent the demons was interested in her. “Adam, for example. Don’t encourage this kind of behavior, I don’t want Adam to be burnt to ash.”
“There was another presence. A bad presence.” Danny looked down at Lucy. Her head was drooping exhaustedly, and Danny held her against his chest protectively.
Don grinned. “A bad presence?” he asked, his eyes sparkling with amusement about Danny’s choice of words.
“Yeah.”
“Adam without coffee?”
Danny chuckled, but he quickly became serious again. “What now, Mac?”
“Now?” Mac pulled a bottle with painkillers and a small charm out of his drawer before he finally found what he was looking for: a small cardboard box. He hadn’t looked at it in years, but he knew exactly what he was holding right now.
This was something he couldn’t have forgotten.
He could feel his fingertips tingle where they rested against the box.
“Now we find out who wants Lucy and why,” he said and opened the box, to lift the bracelet out.
It would probably fit more than twice around Lucy’s wrist, but it was the best kind of protection he could come up with on such short notice, and he had a feeling that she could use it.
“What’s that?” Danny wanted to know with a nod in the direction of the piece of jewelry, but he let Mac slip it over Lucy’s right hand and close the fastening of it without protest.
“Protective bracelet,” Mac murmured. “It’s pretty strong…” He swallowed. “It belonged to Claire,” he then explained with a small, almost embarrassed smile. “I know, it’s not perfect, especially for someone as young as Luc, but it’s the best I can do right now.”
Danny shook his head slightly. “For a first charm, it’s a hell of a gift, Mac,” he said quietly. “Thank you.”
“Yeah,” Don agreed and shifted slightly. “It works, too. Perfect shielding from any outside influences.” He glanced at Lucy and frowned uncomfortably.
“You still have to be careful,” Mac said firmly. “Very careful, Danny.”
“I know.” Danny swallowed against the dryness in his throat. “I’m going to be careful, Mac. I promise.”
Mac managed a smile. He knew how protective Danny could be, especially of things that were very important to him, and his daughter definitely ranked highest on that list, even higher than his own safety. Mac had no doubt that Danny would do everything in his powers to keep Lucy safe from harm, and he had the suspicion that father and daughter would clash about that once Lucy reached puberty.
“I’m going to go and ask some questions,” Don promised and patted Danny’s shoulder gently. “See if anyone knows anything about this thing. Some guy trying to steal kids, people won’t stand by and let that happen. Not if they hadn’t…you know.”
Danny shook his head. Don’s words had left him confused and baffled, and he didn’t really know what Don was trying to say, but he knew that Don would activate some of his contacts and do his part in keeping Lucy safe, and he was glad and thankful about that.
“The folks won’t be happy,” Don said with a small grimace. “As far as they are concerned, kidnapping children is their prerogative. Keep me posted on what comes up on your end?”
Mac nodded, and Don left the room quickly. He had work to do and people to talk to.
It was going to be a long night, and if they didn’t find out who was behind these attacks soon, it was going to be a long couple of days, as well.
~*+*~
“You ready to pick up our daughter and go home?” Danny asked with a small smile that only felt half-forced on his face. He’d managed to get Lucy into her bed, the lock on the door fixed and the living room cleaned up the evening before, and he’d even finished all of it before Lindsay had come home, tired and irritable after a day of sifting through evidence. To his great relief, Mac’s charm had worked and no other demons had attacked him or Lucy, and so he had felt comfortable enough to let her spend the day in her preschool, just like any other day of the week. It certainly helped to keep Lindsay in the dark, and he was pretty sure that someone would’ve called him if his daughter got kidnapped by men with horns on their heads.
Lindsay nodded. “More than ready,” she said with a small smile of her own. She waited by the elevators while Danny grabbed his jacket from the locker room, and Danny took the time to check his phone for messages from Flack, but so far, there hadn’t been anything. Neither Don nor Mac had found out yet who had been behind these attacks from last night.
It left Danny restless and uneasy, checking every few feet that he wasn’t being followed by broad-shouldered men in trench coats. It was getting bad enough that Lindsay started to give him curious and worried glances.
She didn’t protest when he reached for Lucy as soon as he laid eyes on her and cradled her tight against his body, as if he needed to protect her from something. However, her gaze fell onto Lucy’s wrist and the tangled bracelet slung around it.
“Hey,” she said and reached for it. “What’s that?”
“Hmm?” Danny asked distractedly, caught in another glance over his shoulder, to make sure they weren’t followed. “Oh, that. Present from Uncle Mac.”
“It looks expensive,” Lindsay pointed out and brushed her fingertips against one of the pendants on the bracelet. It twinkled in the sunlight with the glint of expensive metals.
Danny made another non-committal sound at the back of his throat. “It belonged to Claire, he wanted Lucy to have it,” he revealed reluctantly and turned slightly away from her, but Lindsay simply turned with him.
“Danny, this is too expensive for her to have it,” she protested. “She’ll lose it, or break it.”
“Nah, she won’t. Don’t worry.” Danny took another step back, but Lindsay didn’t give up so easily. Her fingers were already on the delicate clasp, and before Danny could say a single word, she had taken the bracelet off of her daughter’s wrist.
“What are you doing?” Danny asked, an incredulous tone in his voice, and Lucy made a whimpering sound, as if her favorite toy had been taken from her.
“She’s too young to have something this valuable,” Lindsay argued and closed her fist around the bracelet. “I’ll give it back to Mac. He shouldn’t have.”
“He wanted her to have it,” Danny managed to press out from between clenched teeth. His heart was suddenly beating a hard staccato rhythm against his ribs, and sweat was breaking out over his body as he became acutely aware of the fact that Lucy now was unprotected and very detectable for everybody looking for her using magic.
“But Danny,” Lindsay said, trying to reason with him. “She’s simply too young for this! We can keep it safe for her until she’s old enough, if you don’t want to give it back to Mac.”
“Fine,” Danny wheezed. “Give it to me, I’ll give it back to Mac.”
Lindsay shrugged and dropped the bracelet into Danny’s open palm, and he hastily closed his fingers around it and pressed his closed hand against Lucy’s back, hoping that it was enough to keep her safe, to keep her hidden from too curious, demonic eyes.
It wasn’t.
Seconds later, he saw the first dark-grey trench coat, stretched almost impossibly wide across a set of broad shoulders, quickly followed by another one coming from another side.
Danny was now faced with the prospect of squaring off against two Capricorn-demons at the same time, while keeping his daughter and his clueless wife safe.
There was no way he could keep Lucy safe and keep it secret from Lindsay, he realized with a sinking feeling. His cover was about to be blown, unless a miracle happened.
He waited exactly two heartbeats for this miracle to happen before he decided that he was on his own.
He shoved Lucy into Lindsay’s arms and wrapped the bracelet back around Lucy’s wrist, not listening to Lindsay’s protest. His only concern right now was to keep Lucy safe. If it meant Lindsay thought he was nuts, he couldn’t change it now – she would most likely demand a divorce anyway, he thought uncomfortably, as soon as this situation was over. Lindsay wouldn’t understand, because she didn’t know about demons and kidnapping elves and magicians.
Yet.
Cursing under his breath, Danny reached into the inner pocket of his jacket. He had promised Mac to be careful, and he had promised Lucy to take care of her, and he intended to keep both of these promises.
Lindsay, he thought while his fingers slipped over cool metal and glass, was about to get the eye-opener of her life, simply based on the fact that Danny couldn’t protect her and Lucy while fighting off two demons, and she could fire a gun. He would prefer not to tell her, but he didn’t have a choice anymore.
He simply needed her help. Her opinion of his qualities as husband were unimportant right now – as long as Lucy was safe, everything else was only of secondary concern to Danny.
“Here,” he ordered and pulled the goggles out of his pocket. He handed them to her and took Lucy back. “Put these on!”
The demons were getting closer, and Danny realized that he couldn’t fight them in the middle of the street, in the middle of the day, when people were watching him, and running away wasn’t an option. The demons had already seen them and would follow them, wherever they were going.
Without a second thought, he pulled Lindsay, who was still staring at the goggles in her hands perplexedly, into the next alley. It wasn’t perfect, but it gave them at least marginal protection from unwanted attention, plus, the demons could only attack them from one side – the front.
“Put on the damn goggles,” he repeated, his voice low and urgent. “And then shoot everything that doesn’t look human.”
Lindsay gave him a confused look, but she finally put on the pair of goggles and pulled them down over her eyes. Her surprised gasp and the instinctive move to grab her gun as soon as the first demon came around the corner proved to Danny that the goggles still worked, even if it had been ages since he’d used them the last time.
He pulled out his own weapon – a can of hairspray.
“Danny,” Lindsay murmured and took a step back. “What…what is that?”
He chuckled humorlessly. “That? A demon,” he answered as calmly as he could.
“A demon?” Lindsay repeated disbelievingly, but there was no time for further discussion. The demons were coming closer now, and Danny found himself thinking that he was sick of them, with a sudden sense of disgust and fury. He wanted his normal life with its secret corners back instead of standing here, in this alley, with his wife and kid and trying to fight off demons again.
It was getting old, fast.
The first demon was slowly, but steadily, coming closer, a triumphant grin on his face.
It quickly turned into an expression of shock as the bullets pierced his shoulder and leg, and then, he found himself engulfed in a cloud of hairspray and fire.
“Good thing these things aren’t the sharpest crayons in the box,” Danny muttered as soon as the second demon burst into flame, as well. “You all right?”
Lindsay shook her head and lowered her gun. “You owe me an explanation,2 she told him, a dazed and shocked expression on her face.
Danny nodded. He’d feared as much. “Right,” he said and pushed the can of hairspray back into his pocket, only to pull out his phone, to call Mac. “I’ll explain, I promise,” he said, holding his hand up soothingly. “But the short version…” He frowned, unsure how to go on.
“There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy?” Lindsay suggested. She was still wearing Danny’s goggles and was staring at him as if he’d grown horns as well. It made him uncomfortable, even if he knew with relative certainty that even through the goggles, he looked normal.
“Most of them are between hell and the sewers, but yeah, basically…” he answered before dialing Mac’s number. “What?”
“Nothing,” Lindsay murmured and quickly averted her eyes from him. She didn’t look back up at him during the call or after, until Danny touched her arm and guided her back to the bustling streets.
He had time to figure out what to tell her until they reached Mac’s apartment.
~*+*~
“Okay. You promised me an explanation,” Lindsay started impatiently, as soon as the door had fallen shut behind them.
Danny toed off his shoes and let Mac take Lucy out of his arms before guiding Lindsay into Mac’s living room and sitting down with her.
“This isn’t easy,” he started hesitantly. “Lindsay, I’m…I’m a magician.”
“A what?” She stared at him disbelievingly.
“A magician,” he repeated patiently.
Lindsay started to shake her head slowly. “The kind of magician that pulls rabbits out of a top hat?”
“The kind that pulls demons out of hell, if not careful,” Mac interrupted from the door. Seconds later, he handed Lindsay a steaming cup of tea.
“There’s that,” Danny agreed with a small grimace.
“Great.” Lindsay cradled the cup in her hands and glared at Danny angrily. “When were you planning on telling me all that?”
Danny exchanged a quick glance with Mac that told her everything she needed to know. “I wasn’t,” he admitted, his voice pitched low.
“This is all on a need-to-know basis,” Mac explained calmly. “And you didn’t.”
Lindsay swallowed her anger and fury. “What changed?” she asked.
Mac didn’t blink. “Lucy,” he told her evenly.
Lindsay found herself unable to look Mac in the eye. “I don’t understand,” she admitted helplessly and looked into her cup.
“Your daughter,” Mac explained quietly, “inherited a powerful gift from Danny. She has magic powers, Lindsay, and she is growing up to be a magician, just like her father.”
Lindsay shook her head. “This can’t be happening,” she whispered. “I’m dreaming this.”
“Lindsay, you’re not dreaming,” Mac said. “We are telling you the truth.”
“But…you believe in science, not magic,” she protested helplessly.
Mac smiled. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” he replied.
“Clarke’s three laws,” Danny said. “Look it up when you’ve got some time on your hands, baby.” He shifted. “And how else are you going to explain the demons attacking us in that alley?”
Lindsay didn’t answer.
“We need to figure out who is behind these attacks and what they want with Lucy,” Mac pointed out. “In the meantime, a hiding potion should keep Lucy safe. Danny, you know how to make one?”
Danny nodded, and Mac smiled. It was nothing more than a brief, almost unnoticeable twitch of his lips, but it helped making Danny feel better.
“You want a tour of a real magician’s magic lab?” he offered Lindsay. “And not just anyone’s magic lab, but Mac’s?”
Lindsay glanced at Mac. “You too, huh?” she asked and received a small nod in return. “Mac’s magic lab?” Her voice sounded weak, even to herself. “Sure, why not?”
Danny grinned and rose. He offered her a hand up and guided her into Mac’s kitchen.
“It’s behind the fridge,” he explained and waved his hand before touching a fingertip to the heavy fridge. It moved soundlessly aside, revealing a clean room with a sturdy table in the middle of it behind it. Bottles, glasses and boxes were neatly lined up on shelves along the walls. One wall was covered in shelves which contained old-looking books. On a small pillow in the middle of all these books, a human skull rested and grinned at them.
“Hey, Aiden,” Danny greeted cheerfully, and the bottles of chemicals along the walls to his right rattled almost violently.
“Aiden?” Lindsay asked. “As in, Aiden Burn, who got killed…”
The bottles rattled again and Danny shrugged. “What can you do,” he said, “a violent death can turn you into a ghost, and she couldn’t stay at the lab, so Mac offered her to live here, and it works out perfectly. For both of them.”
“Of course.” Lindsay nodded, as if any of the things she’d learned this day made perfect sense, although she had the suspicion that she was only so accepting right now because she felt so horribly overwhelmed by everything that had happened. Her entire view of the world had been taken and turned upside down.
“Wait.” She frowned as her mind backtracked to a certain point. “Hell really exists?”
Danny nodded. He had in the meantime moved to the other side of the room and had grabbed a dark garment off one of the hooks there.
“Yeah, hell exists. And it’s not a nice place to visit, trust me,” he answered and put the garment on. It almost looked like a normal lab coat, but it was made from another material than cotton, something dark and slick-looking. Long tubes were wound and integrated along its sides and sleeves like artificial veins. The material clung to Danny’s upper body, almost like a second, dark skin, before flaring out into long coat tails, and under the lights of Mac’s lab, it almost looked like a coat made out of latex.
Lindsay snickered. Even to her own ears, it sounded slightly hysterical. “You look like something out of a comic book,” she managed to gasp out between giggles.
Danny lifted a hand to point at her. “Wait until you see Flack,” he grumbled.
“Flack’s in on this too?” Lindsay’s amusement disappeared as quickly as it had come. “Is he a wizard, too?”
“Magician, and no, he isn’t,” Danny answered, but he sounded hesitant.
“Then why does he know and I didn’t?” Lindsay asked. She couldn’t help but feel betrayed by this – why had Don Flack been told, and she hadn’t?
Danny shrugged and grabbed a pair of gloves that seemed to be made out of the same material as his coat. “He was born into this world, has known about it all his life,” he said evasively while wriggling his fingers into them. He connected the artificial veins of his coat with these on the back of his gloves, and when he noticed Lindsay’s curious look, he explained, “dragon skin. It offers absolute protection from all kinds of chemicals. Plus, it makes you look like a superhero.” He grinned and grabbed a thick tome off the shelf. “Now, for that potion and spell…”
He was apparently more than capable of dealing with this potion on his own, and Lindsay was hopelessly overwhelmed by the simple idea of a potion alone, so she decided to leave him alone and find Mac and Lucy.
They were in what seemed to be Mac’s office. Lindsay leaned against the doorframe with crossed arms and observed as Mac folded the plush carpet back, to reveal a big copper circle integrated into the floor. It was surrounded with scuffed chalk-marks that had been half-wiped away. Mac placed Lucy’s blanket in the middle of the circle and put her on top of it before stepping back with an indulgent smile.
“No pentagram?” she asked, slightly surprised.
Mac smiled. “If I wanted to talk to someone from hell, I’d draw one,” he explained. “The circle offers another layer of protection from any kind of magical detection and lets her have a peaceful nap.” He nodded at the little girl. Her eyes were starting to close, and Lindsay had no doubts that Lucy was safe with Mac.
“I was wondering,” she said slowly, “if I could go back to the apartment, pick up some stuff, you know? Lucy’s stuff, I mean.”
Mac shrugged slowly. “You should be fine,” he said hesitantly. “It’s only Lucy they are after…and you haven’t been attacked before…not by demons.” He shrugged again. “If you’re careful, you should be safe.” He sounded doubtful, but apparently, he was not trying to stop her – Lindsay didn’t know if he’d sensed the need in her to be alone, to bring some sort of order back into her thoughts, or if he had any other motivation, but she would take what she could get.
“Okay, then,” she decided. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
TBC...
Author: Kathie
Fandom: CSI:NY
Pairing/Characters: Danny Messer/Lindsay Monroe, Don Flack, Mac Taylor
Gen, Slash, and/or Het: hints of het
Summary: Danny has hidden his true nature from his wife, Lindsay, but when someone tries to kidnap their daughter, all bets are off and Lindsay gets the eye-opener of her life when she finds out that magic, ghosts and demons really exist.
Word Count: 14,884 words
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit made.
Warnings: AU, supernatural phenomena
Author's Notes: written for
fantasybigbang. More notes at the end of the fic.It was, Mac thought with quiet satisfaction, a calm day at the New York Crime Lab, a day when reports could get finished, tests could be done and results could be double-checked without too much stress. Surprisingly, there hadn’t been any major new cases today, and even if the day was still young and all hell could still break loose any second now, and probably would, it was almost peaceful right now.
He allowed himself a satisfied smile and adjusted the microscope slightly. He definitely wouldn’t complain if the day remained this peaceful, he added mentally as he stared at the fiber under the microscope.
The door was pushed open behind him, and words filtered through to him.
“…definitely not.”
Lindsay Monroe Messer, Mac thought, definitely sounded less than enthusiastic about something, and there was a hint of steel in her voice that indicated that Lindsay expected that her wishes would be obeyed or at least respected.
“Come on, baby.” That was the voice of Danny, and Mac frowned slightly. It sounded suspiciously as if Danny was whining, and for various reasons, Mac just didn’t like that tone of voice at all. It set his teeth on edge and made him instinctively want to lash out at something.
“Why not?” Danny asked and crossed his arms over his chest, an unhappy frown etched deeply into his forehead.
“Why not what?” Mac asked and turned away from the cotton fiber under his microscope. As interesting as it was to listen to Lindsay and Danny, it probably was for the best to let them know they weren’t alone before either of them said something they didn’t want the entire crime lab to know. Gossip spread quickly through the lab, carried forth by the techs, quicker than humanly possible. It almost was like magic, how quickly everybody working here knew what was going on; and it wasn’t just limited to members of the crime lab. Nowadays, Mac usually heard it from Don Flack first when Danny and Lindsay had a little discussion in the middle of the trace lab, especially if it was about something as mundane as Danny forgetting to buy milk or baby food, again.
Lindsay whirled around to face him. “Mac!” she said, surprise coloring her voice. Her face turned a pale shade of pink as she blushed. “I didn’t see you there, have you been here for long?”
Mac simply raised his eyebrows, silently pointing out how ridiculous her question had been, and Lindsay flushed even darker. “Yeah, right,” she murmured and snapped on a pair of gloves.
“It’s about Lucy’s birthday,” Danny drawled and leaned his hip against the side of the table, careful not to disturb any of the chemicals there or the evidence that was laid out. His arms were still crossed, and the frown was still on his forehead, as well.
“What about it?” Mac asked and leaned back in his chair, his trace analysis momentarily forgotten.
“We are not going to have Lucy’s birthday party at the lab,” Lindsay firmly said. “By the way, do you have a present, Mac?”
“You wanted to have Lucy’s birthday party at the lab?” Mac asked, surprised by her words. He hadn’t expected that.
“Yes.”
“No.”
Both parents had answered at the same time and were now glaring at each other fiercely.
Mac shook his head slightly. “Why not?”
Lindsay didn’t turn her attention away from her husband. “Come on, Mac,” she said, “I want my daughter to have a normal childhood.”
Danny threw his hands in the air. “Because almost getting kidnapped and killed by an insane psychopath because of a weird fixation is part of a normal childhood,” he scoffed.
Lindsay grew still and silent, and Mac watched as the realization of what he’d just said and what it meant for Lindsay slipped over Danny’s face.
“I want her to have a normal childhood,” she repeated, her voice trembling slightly, but her back was ramrod straight, and then, she turned on her heel and left the trace lab without another word.
Danny sighed.
“Open mouth, insert foot,” he murmured. “Great job, Messer.”
Mac chuckled quietly. “You should probably go and fix that,” he said and nodded in the direction Lindsay had stormed off to.
Danny nodded glumly. “Yeah.” He took a step toward the door. “It would’ve been the easiest thing to do, you know?” he then said and turned again, to face Mac. “She’s going to work all day; I’d pick up Lucy and bring her over, and the cake, and it’s not as if she’d remember it, anyway. She’s just two, you know.”
Mac shrugged. “You never know what she might remember,” he pointed out carefully.
Danny exhaled sharply as his shoulders slumped. “You think she’s right?” he asked hesitantly.
“I don’t know, Danny,” Mac answered. It was the truth. “Maybe she is. Maybe not.”
“Really helpful.” Danny shook his head and half-turned again. “Oh, by the way, you do have a present for her, right?”
“Yes, I do.” Mac was taking his role as godfather to Lucy Messer very serious, and he ‘d spent an entire, very uncomfortable lunch break in a small toy shop with a young shop assistant trying to find the perfect present for a two year old girl. He wasn’t going to tell Danny and Lindsay how stressful it had been – the important thing was that he had a present; a present that Stella had told him was adorable and age-appropriate, when he’d called her and told her about his adventures in gift-shopping.
“All right.” Danny shrugged when Mac didn’t offer any more details about the gift he had picked. “I…I should talk to her before I go and pick up my little girl.”
A happy grin spread over his face at the thought of his little daughter, and Mac couldn’t help but smile a little, as well. Danny’s joy was just that contagious.
“Just her and me today,” Danny added before giving Mac a wave and pushing open the door. “See you tomorrow, Mac.”
“Have fun,” Mac replied and returned his attention to his fiber. The cotton had been drenched in something, he just had to figure out what it was.
Maybe it would help him catch the killer of a young woman and make the streets of New York a little safer. Encouraged, he set to work.
~*+*~
Danny sighed a little as he slung the kitchen towel over his shoulder and surveyed his handiwork. The kitchen was spotless once again, no sign of the epic food fight he and Lucy had had over dinner remained. All traces of mashed potatoes and carrots had been cleaned up while Lucy had been sitting on the floor in the living room and was quietly playing. Danny couldn’t see her from his current spot, but he could hear her, squeaking and laughing happily, a few sounds that could be constructed as syllables and even some actual words occasionally thrown into her babbling.
He had made sure she was free of any mashed vegetables before he had set her on the ground, although he really wasn’t sure how much of the food had really ended up in her stomach. As far as he could tell, most had it had been smeared over the table, the rest of the kitchen furniture and into his hair. He needed a shower before he could go to bed that night.
Shaking his head, he decided that it could wait until Lucy was in her own bed and asleep. Right now, he wanted nothing more than sit down with her, play a little with her and when she was getting tired, he would get her ready for bed and then he could still take that shower and watch some TV before Lindsay came home, and hopefully she would be in a better mood than she had been all day long. Danny had apologized for his insensitive words before he’d left the lab, but he wasn’t sure if it had been enough.
Maybe he should have bought her flowers on the way home, but he’d already balanced Lucy, her bag, and the groceries, and he only had two arms, after all.
He shook his head and wiped the towel one last time over the table before hanging it over the back of a chair and stepping out of the kitchen.
He was grinning and definitely not expecting the wooden block to hit him in the stomach as soon as he entered the living room, but there it was, leaving him doubled over and gasping, more from shock and surprise than from actual pain.
“Hey,” he gasped, “No throwing toys!”
The block fell to the ground when he straightened, and Danny bent down to retrieve it. The wood was polished and warm under his fingers – these blocks had been a present from Sid, and Lucy loved building things with them only to smash them down with a joyful cry, preferably when there was something on TV that Danny wanted to watch.
He straightened again and froze.
Lucy was sitting on the floor in front of the TV, just like Danny had expected it. She was grinning widely, her eyes closed to small slits and her mouth opened in a smile that, under normal circumstances, would have made Danny forget about anything else going on around him.
Anything else, but not this.
The wooden blocks Lucy had been playing with were hanging in the thing air, almost motionless except for the occasional wobbling.
“Lucy…” Danny said, bafflement and shock toning his voice down until all there was left was a soft whisper.
Lucy squeaked and waved a little, chubby arm at him, and one of the blocks sailed slowly toward Danny. He caught it out of the air and swallowed against the sudden tightness in his throat.
This, he hadn’t expected when he’d told her to play with her blocks, but with sudden, sharp clearness he knew he had to do something, right now, about it.
He had to make a call.
He didn’t remember moving, but the phone was suddenly in his hand, his thumb hovering over the keypad.
This, he knew, counted as an emergency, but Mac was probably on a crime scene with Lindsay, and if Danny called him now, Lindsay would find out what was going on.
Lindsay couldn’t find out.
If Lindsay found out about this, everything would be over. She would know he’d lied to her, and she would take his precious, precious daughter way from him and he would never see her again.
He couldn’t let that happen.
Danny took a deep, calming breath, to push back the panic that threatened to press his chest together and prevent him from getting enough air into his lungs, and dialed another number.
Right now, he needed a favor, a huge favor, and there was only one other man, besides Mac, who he trusted with this new-found knowledge about his daughter.
“Don,” he greeted, his voice almost not trembling at all. “How soon can you be here?”
This, he thought while keeping his eyes focused on the display in front of him, couldn’t be real. It had to be an illusion. He had been hit in the head by one of Lucy’s blocks, a block that had been thrown with the angry force of an almost two year old and that hadn’t been levitated by said child. He’d been hit in th head and now he was suffering from a psychotic break, that was all.
Tentatively, he reached out, but it felt real; all he could feel around him was reality.
Genuine reality.
He sighed softly and sat down, cross-legged, in front of his daughter.
“I’d hoped you’d wait a little, you know,” he said quietly. “Would’ve been a lot easier to protect you that way.”
He looked down at the single wooden block and the cell phone he was still holding in his hands before shrugging and letting go of them. They remained floating in mid-air, as if he’d never moved his hands away from them in the first place. Funny, he thought, he couldn’t even remember hanging up on Don.
Lucy squawked happily and crawled into his lap while grabbing at his phone, and Danny pulled her little body close to him and took a deep, carefully measured breath.
“Don’t worry, Lucy,” he promised, his lips pressed into her hair and against her skull. “Daddy’s taking care of you. I promise.”
She made a questioning sound and reached for his phone again, and Danny chuckled quietly and moved it away from her curious fingers.
He didn’t even bother using his hands for it. Instead, he used the powers of his mind for this task.
The phone vibrated, and Danny shook off the daze he’d fallen into and grabbed it, his thumb pressing down on the keypad to accept the call without checking the caller ID first.
“Listen up, Messer.” Don’s voice sounded tinny through the phone, without losing any of its urgency.
“I’m listening,” he promised and pulled Lucy tight against his chest with his other hand.
“Good. Don’t hang up on me again,” Don ordered. “I’ll be with you in twenty, you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“No matter what, I need you to remain calm. Don’t do anything rash, okay, Danny?”
“Okay.”
“Promise.”
“I promise, Don. Just…hurry. I have bad feeling about this.” He didn’t elaborate on the phone what exactly it was that was giving him this bad feeling at the pit of his stomach, but then, he didn’t need to. Don knew him well enough to read his voice like an open book, and even if he didn’t know why Danny had called him so urgently, he knew that it had to be important.
“Twenty minutes,” Don repeated before ending the call.
Danny sighed and sent the phone floating through the air again. All he could do now was wait for Don to show up – wait and think about what would probably happen next, what he had to do to keep Lucy safe, to keep Lindsay in the dark about their daughter.
It was a good thing, he thought with dark amusement, that their wedding vows hadn’t been about being honest, but about being faithful and about him protecting her. Those were all things he could provide his wife with, but if she would find out about this particular part of his life, he wouldn’t even know where he should start his explanation, if she even let him come that far. It was too complicated, too big, and the easiest and best solution would be, and was, to never let Lindsay find out in the first place.
“This is our little secret, yours and mine,” he told Lucy. “Don’t tell Mommy, all right?”
A knock at the door made him look up. “I hope that’s your uncle Donnie,” he murmured as he climbed to his feet. “That was fast, though…he must’ve flown to get here…”
A suspicious frown started to form on his forehead. There was no way twenty minutes had gone by while he’d been sitting there and staring into thin air, panicking about the thought that Lindsay might find out about levitating toys and everything connected to that.
Pressing his forehead against the blessedly cool wood of the door, he concentrated for a split second before looking through the spyhole.
He didn’t recognize the man standing on the other side of his door, and he was sure that he’d never seen him before, in his entire life. Wide-shouldered and muscular under the ratty trenchcoat he was wearing, he looked like a member of a football team. His hairline was receding, and he had his head lowered and his shoulders hunched up, as if he was freezing or trying to avoid getting unwanted attention.
Danny almost snorted at that. The man looked like any other member of a religious splinter group, and Danny wasn’t the slightest bit in the mood to talk about religion right now.
A glance behind him made sure that nothing was floating around the apartment anymore, not in his line of sight anyway, and Danny was already reaching for the door, to open it and tell this man where he could shove his message, when the man suddenly lifted his hand to knock again and a huge wave of uneasiness fell over Danny.
Something wasn’t right here.
The man suddenly froze, his hand still lifted into the air, halfway to the door, as if he’d heard something that had made him stop and reassess his plan. For a split second, Danny allowed himself the wild hope that Don had, against all odds, already arrived, but the man lifted his head, his attention focused entirely on the door in front of him, and every muscle in Danny’s body froze when he saw the man’s face.
The skin was reddened, the way it was when it was getting cold or after exertion or fury. The thing that had made Danny freeze was the man’s eyes.
They were black, the pupils nothing more than two pin-sized glowing red points in their darkness.
A demon, he realized with the part of his brain that was still capable of acting and reacting rationally, a low-ranking demon, bust still, a demon straight from hell, standing in front of his door.
No surprise the guy seemed to be freezing – after the fires of hell, New York in fall was cold, Danny thought, but it quickly became unimportant as he realized why the demon was staring so intently at the door.
He knew Danny was there.
A slow smile curled the demon’s thin lips upward as he balled his still raised hand into a tight fist and pulled it back, his intent obvious. He wanted to break through the door to get to Danny.
Danny whirled around on his heels and rushed back into the apartment, only vaguely aware of the blocks that had risen back into the air, until he reached the closet in their bedroom.
The box he wanted was at the back of the closet, out of sight, and it had a fine layer of dust on it. It was just an ordinary shoe box, a price tag still stuck to one side, and Danny opened while his heart beat a sharp staccato rhythm against the inside of his ribs.
A baseball, an old, broken dream catcher. A ring. Photos of himself and Louie, growing up. He ignored the sharp pain the memories of his brother still brought him. Silver bullets, a little silver cross on a chain, and there, at the bottom of the box, two small bottles, a cross drawn on the label with a thick, black marker.
He grabbed them and broke the seal on the first one while still balancing Lucy on his hip.
The sound of splintering wood made him hurry back into the living room – more space, his brain supplied, which meant a better chance to survive this whole thing for long enough to get Lucy to safety, somehow, even if he didn’t know yet how he could do that. He didn’t even know if there was only this one demon, or if a second one was waiting for him to do something, to swoop in and finish the job – he didn’t even know what the demon wanted from him, in the first place.
However, now wasn’t the time to worry about these questions. He could do that later, if he survived the demon’s first attack.
The blocks clattered to the floor, and Lucy began to cry softly, but Danny couldn’t stop what he was doing to soothe her now. He held her tightly against his side, protecting her with his entire body if necessary, and took control of the wooden blocks himself.
“Greetings, humanling.” The demon bowed his head in a mock-greeting as he stepped into the room. He was grinning, thinking that Danny was unarmed, harmless and easy to overwhelm, and he didn’t even try to appear human anymore.
Reality flickered around him, and the horns became visible; long, curled in on themselves, like the horns of a Capricorn, and Danny took a deep, calming breath and slowly released it.
“What do you want?” he asked harshly.
Sharp, pointed teeth glinted in the light of the lamps.
“Her.” The demon held out a clawed hand, pointing it at Lucy. “If you hand the squishy thing over, I don’t have to kill you.” He tilted his head to the side. “if it helps,” he added, his smile widening, “I’ll try not to kill her.”
Danny knew better than to believe his words, and he refused to listen to the demon even one more second. Everybody knew demons lied, after all.
Wooden blocks crashed into the demon’s solid frame at high speed, all of the fury and fear Danny could muster up behind the forceful push. It wasn’t enough to hurt him, or even knock him off his feet, but the attack had been surprising enough to make the demon stumble back a step. Danny threw a potted plant after the blocks and darted closer as soon as the demon lifted his hands in front of his eyes to protect them from the soft soil.
Danny managed to toss the holy water into the demon’s face and retreat to the other side of the room without getting injured by the demon’s claws, and he watched, chest heaving and muscles coiled tight, as the demon howled and stumbled back, steam rising off his skin where the holy water had come in contact with it.
“This is not the last you’ve seen of me, or my kind,” the demon growled, his hands still covering his face, and stumbled out, almost crashing into the wall as he went.
Danny was too stunned to do more than just stand there, his fingers still clenched around the smooth glass of the bottle, almost half empty now, and around the body of his daughter. He had to get moving, had to get out of the apartment and to a safe place, had to bring Lucy out before the demon showed up again; he had to clean up the mess and fix the broken door…but he couldn’t move a single muscle in his body. Vaguely, he was aware that he was shaking almost violently and that Lucy was crying again – he was sure that she had stopped crying before, but right now, she was sobbing with heartbreaking intensity, snot smeared over her entire face.
“Shh,” he murmured helplessly and forced himself into action. One wave of his hand, and the box of Kleenex was floating close, and Danny started to wipe Lucy’s face and clean up the worst of the mess, but he was still working on autopilot.
When he heard steps behind himself, he reacted before his brain could catch up with his instincts.
“Whoa, Messer!” Don stepped back quickly and lifted his hands slowly. “It’s just me.”
“Sorry,” Danny murmured, too exhausted to be embarrassed, and finally dropped the bottle of holy water. It was empty now anyway, the rest of the holy water now darkening Don’s jacket and shirt.
“What the hell, Messer?” Don asked, a bewildered expression on his face. “What happened here?”
“Capricorn demon, stomping in here and trying to take Lucy,” Danny murmured and stumbled to the couch. He needed to sit down now because he didn’t think his trembling knees would keep him upright for much longer.
“Huh,” Don said and looked down at his wet clothes again. “And you managed to fight it off with holy water and a fern?”
“Don’t forget Lucy’s blocks,” Danny added. Lucy’s sobs had finally calmed down to an occasional hiccup every now and then, and he looked up at Don with a small frown. “I know it sounds ridiculous…”
“Huh,” Don said again and crossed his arms over his chest. “Not if you surprised him. What’s more interesting is – what is a class-two-demon from hell doing in your apartment in the first place, Messer?”
Danny shook his head numbly. “Lucy,” he murmured. “She…I caught her levitating those damn blocks, Don. Levitating, man.”
“Levitating, as in, telekinesis?” Don asked and came to sit next to him.
“Yeah.”
“A skill usually developed a little later than two years?”
“Yeah.”
“Does Mac know?”
“No.”
“Were you planning on telling him?”
“Don’t know. Yeah.” Danny ran his hand over his face. His fingers were still shaking almost violently, and he didn’t fight when Don closed his own fingers gently around them, stilling the tremors.
“We should tell him now,” Don said quietly. “Come on. I’ll drive. This is something Mac needs to know.”
Danny didn’t protest.
~*+*~
“Mac?” Don still had his hand on Danny’s elbow, guiding him and making sure he didn’t stumble, as they reached Mac’s office.
Mac looked up with a little frown that only deepened when he saw Danny and the state he was in.
“What happened?”
Danny shook his head and sat down heavily. “Lindsay?” he asked hoarsely.
“She’s at a scene,” Mac answered. “Do you want me to call her?”
Danny shook hi s head and closed his eyes briefly. “Please don’t,” he said softly. “I don’t her involved in this.” He looked up at Mac. “She can’t find out. Not like this.”
“Find out?” Mac asked and came to sit next to Danny while giving Don a puzzled look. His voice was pitched low and soothing, the voice he used when talking to the victims at crime scenes, Danny thought, and it made him realize just how shaken he probably had to look.
But then, a class-two demon had just attacked him in his own home, and he’d survived the attack without getting injured – he was allowed to fall apart a little, although Don had done his best to keep the pieces together, once again.
“Danny just had an encounter of the third kind,” Don jumped in with an explanation when it was obvious that Danny wouldn’t answer. His hand brushed against Danny’s briefly, a soothing touch that made Danny immediately feel better. “Capricorn demon, trying to grab Lucy.”
Danny felt another tremor run through him at Don’s calm words, despite the other man’s calming touch and despite knowing that he was safe with Mac and him. They would protect him and Lucy, plus, he had fought off a demon on his own, he wasn’t exactly helpless…
Mac squeezed the back of his neck, and the panic welling up in him slowly dissipated again.
“A Capricorn demon?” he repeated questioningly.
Danny nodded and finally looked up. “Yeah,” he confirmed, his voice rough. “He looked just like that guy over there.”
His muscles tensed again as he nodded toward the man in the dark trench coat who just made his way toward them. Mac recognized him immediately, but he didn’t know how the demon had managed to get on this level – it was protected, in more than just one way, with spells so complicated and intricate that some of the demons that were allowed in the lab sometimes asked to leave early because of migraines.
“What the hell?” Don murmured. He’d seen and recognized the demon as well. “Someone must’ve promised these guys heaven and hell for Lucy.”
“Or they are pissed off because of their friend,” Danny found himself answering.
Don gave him a sideways glance. “Well, I could understand that,” he quipped, “Holy water is a bitch to get out of clothes.”
Mac snorted and stood, to await the demon.
“Humanling,” the demon greeted as he pushed the door to Mac’s office open. “Step aside.”
Mac shook his head. “You know I can’t do that,” he pointed out calmly and took a step toward him. “But you can tell me who sent you and what they want.”
Again, reality rippled, and the demon’s human appearance fell away, like a layer that was slowly being peeled off. The curled horns on this one’s head were much bigger, and Danny had the sinking feeling that it wouldn’t be as easy to get rid of this one as it had been with the last one.
However, Mac didn’t seem to be impressed.
“Who sent you?” he barked at the demon, his eyes focused on the creature.
The demon shook itself, like a wet dog. “Nobody paid us,” he replied, “But we were promised a reward. For the little squishy thing.”
“What kind of reward?” Mac asked and took another step toward the demon who threw his head back and laughed.
“That is between him and us,” he pointed out, “and none of your concern.” His hands moved, fast enough to be nothing but a blur, and sharp claws whistled through the air. However, Mac had anticipated the attack and was already moving out of the way. He wasn’t attacking the demon, like Danny would have done, and was taking a step back instead.
“If I match his offer, will you let us be?” he asked.
The demon snorted. “You will not be able to match his offer, humanling,” he said. “He has the key.”
He reached out for Mac again, but at the last second, he changed his attack and its direction. His claws brushed against Mac’s sleeve, and the sound of ripping fabric was loud in the office. The demon charged again, carefully staying out of Mac’s range, and slashed in his direction again, aiming for Mac’s throat.
Before he could make contact,, the air in the room suddenly shifted, and the demon froze, mid-movement. He growled once he realized what had happened – instead of fighting him physically, like Danny would have done, Mac had taken the fight to another level and had him pinned with the power of his mind alone.
“What did he promise you?” he asked again. His teeth were clenched tight, and sweat was starting to form along his hairline.
The demon managed a grin. “He promised us home,” he snarled and squirmed. Mac still had him pinned, but it became increasingly difficult to maintain control and he was running out quickly. The more the demon fought against the invisible grip, the sooner he would be free.
Mac felt the burn of sweat in his eyes, but he didn’t blink. His muscles started to tremble, and he knew that he couldn’t fight this demon for much longer. It was an old one, experienced and patient, and it was determined to fulfill his job and get his reward.
Mac grunted softly. The demon’s smile turned malicious.
“You’re not bad, for a humanling,” the demon admitted, his voice turning into a low, raspy growl. “I would take your deal if there was any chance you might be able to keep your end of it.”
He shrugged, the movement small and almost imperceptible, and Mac knew he was seconds from breaking free.
“Danny. Run,” he ordered sharply – something he should’ve done before, but he had needed to keep all of his focus on the demon and Danny, who knew what was going on, had kept silent to avoid distracting Mac.
He heard movement behind him, the shuffling of Danny’s feet as he moved toward the door, and suddenly, Lucy made a questioning sound – a sound that broke the last straw of control Mac had over himself.
The demon rushed two steps toward him, his claws reaching for Mac, when suddenly, a wave of heat brushed past Mac. He felt the small pinprick of the tips of sharp claws penetrating his skin as they reached his chest, but instead of burning pain, he only experienced an unbelievable heat.
The demon burst into fire in front of him, a look of surprise on his face, and then, all that was left of him was a cloud of ash and smoke.
Mac swallowed thickly. “Danny?” he croaked.
“It wasn’t me,” Danny answered. His voice sounded dazed.
Don coughed and waved a hand in front of his face. “Lucy,” he said. His voice was quiet, but in the sudden silence of Mac’s office, late at night, it was almost deafening.
Mac pulled his shirt away from his chest and inspected the damage done to it. Seven little puncture holes were in it, right over his chest, where the demon’s claws had been.
“Did you just send the demon back to hell?” Danny asked the little girl still in his arms, disbelief and amazement coloring his shaking voice. “That’s Daddy’s little girl, right there.”
Mac coughed and sat down behind his desk. “Daddy’s little girl almost set my lab on fire,” he pointed out dryly.
Danny shrugged. “There was a demon in there,” he answered. “She was only trying to save your life, Mac.”
Mac took a deep breath. The whole absurdity of the situation almost made him laugh out loud, but he managed to keep a straight face, no matter how hard it was.
“There usually are demons in the lab,” he pointed out and pulled open a drawer of his desk. The power Lucy had displayed was alarming, and Mac had a strong suspicion that it was the reason why these Capricorn demons were interested in her – no, he corrected himself, why the mysterious stranger who had sent the demons was interested in her. “Adam, for example. Don’t encourage this kind of behavior, I don’t want Adam to be burnt to ash.”
“There was another presence. A bad presence.” Danny looked down at Lucy. Her head was drooping exhaustedly, and Danny held her against his chest protectively.
Don grinned. “A bad presence?” he asked, his eyes sparkling with amusement about Danny’s choice of words.
“Yeah.”
“Adam without coffee?”
Danny chuckled, but he quickly became serious again. “What now, Mac?”
“Now?” Mac pulled a bottle with painkillers and a small charm out of his drawer before he finally found what he was looking for: a small cardboard box. He hadn’t looked at it in years, but he knew exactly what he was holding right now.
This was something he couldn’t have forgotten.
He could feel his fingertips tingle where they rested against the box.
“Now we find out who wants Lucy and why,” he said and opened the box, to lift the bracelet out.
It would probably fit more than twice around Lucy’s wrist, but it was the best kind of protection he could come up with on such short notice, and he had a feeling that she could use it.
“What’s that?” Danny wanted to know with a nod in the direction of the piece of jewelry, but he let Mac slip it over Lucy’s right hand and close the fastening of it without protest.
“Protective bracelet,” Mac murmured. “It’s pretty strong…” He swallowed. “It belonged to Claire,” he then explained with a small, almost embarrassed smile. “I know, it’s not perfect, especially for someone as young as Luc, but it’s the best I can do right now.”
Danny shook his head slightly. “For a first charm, it’s a hell of a gift, Mac,” he said quietly. “Thank you.”
“Yeah,” Don agreed and shifted slightly. “It works, too. Perfect shielding from any outside influences.” He glanced at Lucy and frowned uncomfortably.
“You still have to be careful,” Mac said firmly. “Very careful, Danny.”
“I know.” Danny swallowed against the dryness in his throat. “I’m going to be careful, Mac. I promise.”
Mac managed a smile. He knew how protective Danny could be, especially of things that were very important to him, and his daughter definitely ranked highest on that list, even higher than his own safety. Mac had no doubt that Danny would do everything in his powers to keep Lucy safe from harm, and he had the suspicion that father and daughter would clash about that once Lucy reached puberty.
“I’m going to go and ask some questions,” Don promised and patted Danny’s shoulder gently. “See if anyone knows anything about this thing. Some guy trying to steal kids, people won’t stand by and let that happen. Not if they hadn’t…you know.”
Danny shook his head. Don’s words had left him confused and baffled, and he didn’t really know what Don was trying to say, but he knew that Don would activate some of his contacts and do his part in keeping Lucy safe, and he was glad and thankful about that.
“The folks won’t be happy,” Don said with a small grimace. “As far as they are concerned, kidnapping children is their prerogative. Keep me posted on what comes up on your end?”
Mac nodded, and Don left the room quickly. He had work to do and people to talk to.
It was going to be a long night, and if they didn’t find out who was behind these attacks soon, it was going to be a long couple of days, as well.
~*+*~
“You ready to pick up our daughter and go home?” Danny asked with a small smile that only felt half-forced on his face. He’d managed to get Lucy into her bed, the lock on the door fixed and the living room cleaned up the evening before, and he’d even finished all of it before Lindsay had come home, tired and irritable after a day of sifting through evidence. To his great relief, Mac’s charm had worked and no other demons had attacked him or Lucy, and so he had felt comfortable enough to let her spend the day in her preschool, just like any other day of the week. It certainly helped to keep Lindsay in the dark, and he was pretty sure that someone would’ve called him if his daughter got kidnapped by men with horns on their heads.
Lindsay nodded. “More than ready,” she said with a small smile of her own. She waited by the elevators while Danny grabbed his jacket from the locker room, and Danny took the time to check his phone for messages from Flack, but so far, there hadn’t been anything. Neither Don nor Mac had found out yet who had been behind these attacks from last night.
It left Danny restless and uneasy, checking every few feet that he wasn’t being followed by broad-shouldered men in trench coats. It was getting bad enough that Lindsay started to give him curious and worried glances.
She didn’t protest when he reached for Lucy as soon as he laid eyes on her and cradled her tight against his body, as if he needed to protect her from something. However, her gaze fell onto Lucy’s wrist and the tangled bracelet slung around it.
“Hey,” she said and reached for it. “What’s that?”
“Hmm?” Danny asked distractedly, caught in another glance over his shoulder, to make sure they weren’t followed. “Oh, that. Present from Uncle Mac.”
“It looks expensive,” Lindsay pointed out and brushed her fingertips against one of the pendants on the bracelet. It twinkled in the sunlight with the glint of expensive metals.
Danny made another non-committal sound at the back of his throat. “It belonged to Claire, he wanted Lucy to have it,” he revealed reluctantly and turned slightly away from her, but Lindsay simply turned with him.
“Danny, this is too expensive for her to have it,” she protested. “She’ll lose it, or break it.”
“Nah, she won’t. Don’t worry.” Danny took another step back, but Lindsay didn’t give up so easily. Her fingers were already on the delicate clasp, and before Danny could say a single word, she had taken the bracelet off of her daughter’s wrist.
“What are you doing?” Danny asked, an incredulous tone in his voice, and Lucy made a whimpering sound, as if her favorite toy had been taken from her.
“She’s too young to have something this valuable,” Lindsay argued and closed her fist around the bracelet. “I’ll give it back to Mac. He shouldn’t have.”
“He wanted her to have it,” Danny managed to press out from between clenched teeth. His heart was suddenly beating a hard staccato rhythm against his ribs, and sweat was breaking out over his body as he became acutely aware of the fact that Lucy now was unprotected and very detectable for everybody looking for her using magic.
“But Danny,” Lindsay said, trying to reason with him. “She’s simply too young for this! We can keep it safe for her until she’s old enough, if you don’t want to give it back to Mac.”
“Fine,” Danny wheezed. “Give it to me, I’ll give it back to Mac.”
Lindsay shrugged and dropped the bracelet into Danny’s open palm, and he hastily closed his fingers around it and pressed his closed hand against Lucy’s back, hoping that it was enough to keep her safe, to keep her hidden from too curious, demonic eyes.
It wasn’t.
Seconds later, he saw the first dark-grey trench coat, stretched almost impossibly wide across a set of broad shoulders, quickly followed by another one coming from another side.
Danny was now faced with the prospect of squaring off against two Capricorn-demons at the same time, while keeping his daughter and his clueless wife safe.
There was no way he could keep Lucy safe and keep it secret from Lindsay, he realized with a sinking feeling. His cover was about to be blown, unless a miracle happened.
He waited exactly two heartbeats for this miracle to happen before he decided that he was on his own.
He shoved Lucy into Lindsay’s arms and wrapped the bracelet back around Lucy’s wrist, not listening to Lindsay’s protest. His only concern right now was to keep Lucy safe. If it meant Lindsay thought he was nuts, he couldn’t change it now – she would most likely demand a divorce anyway, he thought uncomfortably, as soon as this situation was over. Lindsay wouldn’t understand, because she didn’t know about demons and kidnapping elves and magicians.
Yet.
Cursing under his breath, Danny reached into the inner pocket of his jacket. He had promised Mac to be careful, and he had promised Lucy to take care of her, and he intended to keep both of these promises.
Lindsay, he thought while his fingers slipped over cool metal and glass, was about to get the eye-opener of her life, simply based on the fact that Danny couldn’t protect her and Lucy while fighting off two demons, and she could fire a gun. He would prefer not to tell her, but he didn’t have a choice anymore.
He simply needed her help. Her opinion of his qualities as husband were unimportant right now – as long as Lucy was safe, everything else was only of secondary concern to Danny.
“Here,” he ordered and pulled the goggles out of his pocket. He handed them to her and took Lucy back. “Put these on!”
The demons were getting closer, and Danny realized that he couldn’t fight them in the middle of the street, in the middle of the day, when people were watching him, and running away wasn’t an option. The demons had already seen them and would follow them, wherever they were going.
Without a second thought, he pulled Lindsay, who was still staring at the goggles in her hands perplexedly, into the next alley. It wasn’t perfect, but it gave them at least marginal protection from unwanted attention, plus, the demons could only attack them from one side – the front.
“Put on the damn goggles,” he repeated, his voice low and urgent. “And then shoot everything that doesn’t look human.”
Lindsay gave him a confused look, but she finally put on the pair of goggles and pulled them down over her eyes. Her surprised gasp and the instinctive move to grab her gun as soon as the first demon came around the corner proved to Danny that the goggles still worked, even if it had been ages since he’d used them the last time.
He pulled out his own weapon – a can of hairspray.
“Danny,” Lindsay murmured and took a step back. “What…what is that?”
He chuckled humorlessly. “That? A demon,” he answered as calmly as he could.
“A demon?” Lindsay repeated disbelievingly, but there was no time for further discussion. The demons were coming closer now, and Danny found himself thinking that he was sick of them, with a sudden sense of disgust and fury. He wanted his normal life with its secret corners back instead of standing here, in this alley, with his wife and kid and trying to fight off demons again.
It was getting old, fast.
The first demon was slowly, but steadily, coming closer, a triumphant grin on his face.
It quickly turned into an expression of shock as the bullets pierced his shoulder and leg, and then, he found himself engulfed in a cloud of hairspray and fire.
“Good thing these things aren’t the sharpest crayons in the box,” Danny muttered as soon as the second demon burst into flame, as well. “You all right?”
Lindsay shook her head and lowered her gun. “You owe me an explanation,2 she told him, a dazed and shocked expression on her face.
Danny nodded. He’d feared as much. “Right,” he said and pushed the can of hairspray back into his pocket, only to pull out his phone, to call Mac. “I’ll explain, I promise,” he said, holding his hand up soothingly. “But the short version…” He frowned, unsure how to go on.
“There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy?” Lindsay suggested. She was still wearing Danny’s goggles and was staring at him as if he’d grown horns as well. It made him uncomfortable, even if he knew with relative certainty that even through the goggles, he looked normal.
“Most of them are between hell and the sewers, but yeah, basically…” he answered before dialing Mac’s number. “What?”
“Nothing,” Lindsay murmured and quickly averted her eyes from him. She didn’t look back up at him during the call or after, until Danny touched her arm and guided her back to the bustling streets.
He had time to figure out what to tell her until they reached Mac’s apartment.
~*+*~
“Okay. You promised me an explanation,” Lindsay started impatiently, as soon as the door had fallen shut behind them.
Danny toed off his shoes and let Mac take Lucy out of his arms before guiding Lindsay into Mac’s living room and sitting down with her.
“This isn’t easy,” he started hesitantly. “Lindsay, I’m…I’m a magician.”
“A what?” She stared at him disbelievingly.
“A magician,” he repeated patiently.
Lindsay started to shake her head slowly. “The kind of magician that pulls rabbits out of a top hat?”
“The kind that pulls demons out of hell, if not careful,” Mac interrupted from the door. Seconds later, he handed Lindsay a steaming cup of tea.
“There’s that,” Danny agreed with a small grimace.
“Great.” Lindsay cradled the cup in her hands and glared at Danny angrily. “When were you planning on telling me all that?”
Danny exchanged a quick glance with Mac that told her everything she needed to know. “I wasn’t,” he admitted, his voice pitched low.
“This is all on a need-to-know basis,” Mac explained calmly. “And you didn’t.”
Lindsay swallowed her anger and fury. “What changed?” she asked.
Mac didn’t blink. “Lucy,” he told her evenly.
Lindsay found herself unable to look Mac in the eye. “I don’t understand,” she admitted helplessly and looked into her cup.
“Your daughter,” Mac explained quietly, “inherited a powerful gift from Danny. She has magic powers, Lindsay, and she is growing up to be a magician, just like her father.”
Lindsay shook her head. “This can’t be happening,” she whispered. “I’m dreaming this.”
“Lindsay, you’re not dreaming,” Mac said. “We are telling you the truth.”
“But…you believe in science, not magic,” she protested helplessly.
Mac smiled. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” he replied.
“Clarke’s three laws,” Danny said. “Look it up when you’ve got some time on your hands, baby.” He shifted. “And how else are you going to explain the demons attacking us in that alley?”
Lindsay didn’t answer.
“We need to figure out who is behind these attacks and what they want with Lucy,” Mac pointed out. “In the meantime, a hiding potion should keep Lucy safe. Danny, you know how to make one?”
Danny nodded, and Mac smiled. It was nothing more than a brief, almost unnoticeable twitch of his lips, but it helped making Danny feel better.
“You want a tour of a real magician’s magic lab?” he offered Lindsay. “And not just anyone’s magic lab, but Mac’s?”
Lindsay glanced at Mac. “You too, huh?” she asked and received a small nod in return. “Mac’s magic lab?” Her voice sounded weak, even to herself. “Sure, why not?”
Danny grinned and rose. He offered her a hand up and guided her into Mac’s kitchen.
“It’s behind the fridge,” he explained and waved his hand before touching a fingertip to the heavy fridge. It moved soundlessly aside, revealing a clean room with a sturdy table in the middle of it behind it. Bottles, glasses and boxes were neatly lined up on shelves along the walls. One wall was covered in shelves which contained old-looking books. On a small pillow in the middle of all these books, a human skull rested and grinned at them.
“Hey, Aiden,” Danny greeted cheerfully, and the bottles of chemicals along the walls to his right rattled almost violently.
“Aiden?” Lindsay asked. “As in, Aiden Burn, who got killed…”
The bottles rattled again and Danny shrugged. “What can you do,” he said, “a violent death can turn you into a ghost, and she couldn’t stay at the lab, so Mac offered her to live here, and it works out perfectly. For both of them.”
“Of course.” Lindsay nodded, as if any of the things she’d learned this day made perfect sense, although she had the suspicion that she was only so accepting right now because she felt so horribly overwhelmed by everything that had happened. Her entire view of the world had been taken and turned upside down.
“Wait.” She frowned as her mind backtracked to a certain point. “Hell really exists?”
Danny nodded. He had in the meantime moved to the other side of the room and had grabbed a dark garment off one of the hooks there.
“Yeah, hell exists. And it’s not a nice place to visit, trust me,” he answered and put the garment on. It almost looked like a normal lab coat, but it was made from another material than cotton, something dark and slick-looking. Long tubes were wound and integrated along its sides and sleeves like artificial veins. The material clung to Danny’s upper body, almost like a second, dark skin, before flaring out into long coat tails, and under the lights of Mac’s lab, it almost looked like a coat made out of latex.
Lindsay snickered. Even to her own ears, it sounded slightly hysterical. “You look like something out of a comic book,” she managed to gasp out between giggles.
Danny lifted a hand to point at her. “Wait until you see Flack,” he grumbled.
“Flack’s in on this too?” Lindsay’s amusement disappeared as quickly as it had come. “Is he a wizard, too?”
“Magician, and no, he isn’t,” Danny answered, but he sounded hesitant.
“Then why does he know and I didn’t?” Lindsay asked. She couldn’t help but feel betrayed by this – why had Don Flack been told, and she hadn’t?
Danny shrugged and grabbed a pair of gloves that seemed to be made out of the same material as his coat. “He was born into this world, has known about it all his life,” he said evasively while wriggling his fingers into them. He connected the artificial veins of his coat with these on the back of his gloves, and when he noticed Lindsay’s curious look, he explained, “dragon skin. It offers absolute protection from all kinds of chemicals. Plus, it makes you look like a superhero.” He grinned and grabbed a thick tome off the shelf. “Now, for that potion and spell…”
He was apparently more than capable of dealing with this potion on his own, and Lindsay was hopelessly overwhelmed by the simple idea of a potion alone, so she decided to leave him alone and find Mac and Lucy.
They were in what seemed to be Mac’s office. Lindsay leaned against the doorframe with crossed arms and observed as Mac folded the plush carpet back, to reveal a big copper circle integrated into the floor. It was surrounded with scuffed chalk-marks that had been half-wiped away. Mac placed Lucy’s blanket in the middle of the circle and put her on top of it before stepping back with an indulgent smile.
“No pentagram?” she asked, slightly surprised.
Mac smiled. “If I wanted to talk to someone from hell, I’d draw one,” he explained. “The circle offers another layer of protection from any kind of magical detection and lets her have a peaceful nap.” He nodded at the little girl. Her eyes were starting to close, and Lindsay had no doubts that Lucy was safe with Mac.
“I was wondering,” she said slowly, “if I could go back to the apartment, pick up some stuff, you know? Lucy’s stuff, I mean.”
Mac shrugged slowly. “You should be fine,” he said hesitantly. “It’s only Lucy they are after…and you haven’t been attacked before…not by demons.” He shrugged again. “If you’re careful, you should be safe.” He sounded doubtful, but apparently, he was not trying to stop her – Lindsay didn’t know if he’d sensed the need in her to be alone, to bring some sort of order back into her thoughts, or if he had any other motivation, but she would take what she could get.
“Okay, then,” she decided. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
TBC...