J.L. Doty - Dead Among Us 01 - When Dead Ain’t Dead Enough Read Online Free PDF Page B

supposed to do. He was certain of it. Dayandalous escorted him back to the elevators, personally called an elevator for him, kept up a polite and charming banter while they waited for it. But in the back of Paul’s thoughts he kept thinking there was something he’d forgotten, and it wasn’t until he stepped into the lobby back on the ground floor that he realized he hadn’t learned anything about Dayandalous’ firm, hadn’t asked even one question.
    He turned around, went back to the elevators and called one, thinking he could at least get a brochure or something from the receptionist. When the elevator arrived he stepped into it, and was going to press the button for the forty-fourth floor, but there was no such button. He stood there for a moment staring at the buttons, but they ended at thirty-eight. Perhaps one of the other elevators went all the way to the top. There were six elevators, and he patiently waited for each, but not one went beyond the thirty-eighth floor. He searched the lobby carefully, thinking he’d taken a wrong turn and there was another bank of elevators. But that wasn’t the case.
    Paul asked the security guard in the lobby, “How do I get to the forty-fourth floor?”
    The guard looked at him oddly and said, “There’s no forty-fourth floor in this building, sir. The top floor is thirty-eight.”
    “But I was just on the forty-fourth floor.” Paul decided to mention the name of the firm and the man he’d just spoken to on the forty-fourth floor, but he couldn’t remember anything about either.
    The guard’s expression changed to concern, perhaps wondering if he’d have to deal with a nut case, hopefully not a violent nut case. He spoke carefully, as if speaking to a child. “I said no forty-fourth floor. If you have business on the forty-fourth floor, then you got the wrong building.”
    He ushered Paul out to the street. Paul stood there for a moment, then turned back to the building and looked at it carefully. It was like any of a dozen other buildings on Market Street, and for the life of him he couldn’t remember why he’d wasted his time coming here.
    Baalthelmass had survived on this Mortal Plane and fed now for more than four hundred years. The occasional wizard or witch had sought to destroy It, but always It had evaded them, and occasionally devoured them, though practitioners of the arcane were far too dangerous to prey upon in anything but self-defense. But when necessity forced Its hand, they were truly the most delectable kill, so much more delicious than the ordinary cattle that walked the streets of mundane life.
    Unlike lowly Tertius emergents, Baalthelmass had been exceedingly careful from the first moment of Its entry onto the Mortal Plane. After devouring the soul of the sorcerer that had summoned It, It had resisted the initial ravenous compulsion to feed blindly. A Tertius emergent would inevitably succumb to the urge to devour one life after another in a gluttonous orgy. Had Baalthelmass been so foolish, so lacking in control, a string of deaths like that would’ve alerted mortal sorcerers to Its presence and they would’ve hunted It. No, to submit to such foolish excess was a formula for discovery that would’ve resulted in Its own annihilation. Instead, while still unable to disguise Its true nature, It had cautiously consumed a soul here, another there, always choosing Its victims from among the poor and displaced, and never in the same location. And after each feeding It left their lifeless bodies with no signs of violence or foul play. The authorities always assumed natural causes.
    Always moving cautiously, It had remained hidden until It had built Its strength to the point where It could cast a glamour and walk freely among the mortal cattle. And now, after centuries of feeding and building Its strength, It had gained enough power to control Its shape, to maintain actual human form, not just a glamour to fool the mortal eye, though that required