(The following happens after Rhys' car is found by the police, wrecked and abadonned, and Det. Lindley talks to Riley in the hospital.)

Deacon lied. Sometimes it was part of his job to lie. He considered those kinds of lies to be safe, harmless little white lies, the kind of lies that got people to tell you things they might not normally say. It wasn't that he wanted to lie. It's just the way things were. Sometimes it was necessary, especially where Riley was concerned. He'd told her he was checking into a sleazebag motel to get some rest, but that was only partially true. He had no intentions of sleeping yet. He had too much work to do.

He'd spent the better part of the day going through Bristol's car, cataloging his possessions, deciding which were evidence and which were not. He didn't see any harm in passing along a few items that might give Riley comfort. He'd broken protocol for her. It wasn't the first time, and he knew it probably wouldn't be the last. But then, in his opinion, rules were made to be broken. Hell, if no one ever broke any rules, he'd be out of a job.

He'd gone over the Mustang with a fine-tooth comb, but the only things he'd found of any real interest were Bristol's wallet, a couple of journals, and his laptop. Not to mention the man's weapons cache, which included such odd items as a sawed-off shotgun filled with salt rounds, a blow torch, and holy water.

The contents of Bristol's wallet, however, were no big surprise, other than the wad of cash Deacon assumed belonged to Riley. The wallet contained an expired Pennsylvania Driver's License, along with various stolen or possibly fraudulent credit cards and forms of I.D. There were also various types of police badges, ranging from small town sheriffs all the way up to the F.B.I. The registration and the plates on the car were stolen, as well.

He found himself chuckling at some of the surnames on the fake I.D.s. At least, the guy had good taste in music. Clapton, Hendrix, Page, Beck, Gilmour, and Blackmore: the names read like a who's who of rock's greatest guitarists. There were two surnames he was fairly certain were legit, or at least, partially legit -- that of Bristol and Donovan.

Deacon had learned that Donovan had been the last name of Bristol's childhood guardian, or he might have thought it was just another rock legend. The lyrics of an old Donovan song popped into his head: "They call me Mellow Yellow." Deacon rubbed his forehead, exorcising the song from his head and trying to focus his thoughts.

The first thing he'd done upon leaving Riley's hospital room had been to call Baron Fonterra. As with all of his conversations with Baron, it had been brief and to the point. No, Baron didn't know who Bristol's contacts might be, other than John Takamatsu. No, he didn't know any Niki in Denver. Yes, he'd call if something came to mind. Yes, he believed in demons. No, he didn't know why they were after Bristol. No one did. Baron had speculated that it might have something to do with the parents' deaths, but he'd never quite been able to put the pieces of the puzzle together. No, he knew nothing about Chris' death. Was he being looked at as a suspect? No, then good day to you, Detective.

The next thing he'd done was try the number for Takamatsu that Riley had so kindly dialed from his cell phone. There was no answer, no voice mail, nothing. It just rang and rang. He made a mental note to find out who the man's cell phone carrier was and confirm that the line wasn't out of service. If he couldn't contact Takamatsu, he might be in danger, as well. He'd done a little digging and found that Bristol and Takamatsu had known each other for over ten years and were known associates of David Aditson's, the vic in the house in Flagstaff. Takamatsu and Bristol had attended the same high school before they'd both graduated -- Bristol by the skin of his teeth -- and Bristol had once more dropped off the map.

Bristol's entire life read like an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, from his parents' murders when he was nine right up to his current disappearance. It was disturbing, to say the least. It was enough to keep Deacon up nights trying to figure it all out.

He'd managed to gain access to the police file on Bristol's parents' deaths and was surprised to find it was still listed as a cold case. It wasn't their deaths that were such a mystery. It had been determined pretty early on that Bristol's father had murdered his wife and that his nine-year old son had shot him in self-defense. That much made sense, if those sorts of things ever really made sense. The kid had had no choice but to shoot his father in order to save his own life. Deacon could only guess what kind of effect something like that might have on a child's psyche, but he was no shrink. He wasn't concerned about the kid's state of mind. What concerned him were the facts.

The looming question in the cold case seemed to be the fact that Bristol's mother had been sliced open, but the child she had been carrying inside her had never been found. It was as if the child had disappeared into thin air. That fact alone, in Deacon's opinion, shot the original investigator's theory all to hell. There had to have been an accomplice. Someone had gotten away with murder, and Deacon wanted to know who.

Did the nine-year-old Bristol flip out, kill his own parents, and dispose of his sibling's body before the authorities had arrived? Was there a jealous lover involved, or maybe someone who wanted to steal a healthy baby to sell on the black market? But if that was the case, why not wait until the child was born? None of it made any sense, and Deacon couldn't help but wonder if the answers were filed away somewhere in the deep, dark recesses of Bristol's mind. But before he could determine that, he had to find him, and that posed yet another problem.

Suppose it was demons who'd attacked the family twenty years ago. Suppose they'd ripped the child from its mother's womb, for whatever reason. Suppose it wasn't just the infant they'd wanted, but the nine-year-old boy, too. Suppose they'd bungled the job and had spent the last twenty or so years trying to finish it. Twenty years might seem like nothing to demons. But why? That seemed to be the $64 million question, and no one seemed to have any answers. At least, not any that they were sharing.

The more Deacon thought about it, the more it made sense, but it meant that they'd have to seriously consider the possibility that Bristol's disappearance might mean that the demons had finally completed the work they'd started twenty years ago. He'd mentioned as much to Riley, and she hadn't reacted well. Not that he was surprised really. She was clearly in love with the guy, much to his own dismay. He knew he'd blown his chances of ever recapturing what he'd once had with Riley, but that didn't mean he was going to just step aside and let her repeat the same mistakes with someone else.

Deacon tapped his fingers on the table, annoyed at the dead ends and unanswered questions. He had someone working on cracking Bristol's password to unlock his laptop, but so far, they'd had no luck. There was one small possible but unlikely lead. There had been a word scratched into the dirt of David's sweat lodge -- N-A-M-A-A-H. He mulled over the word for a while, but it meant nothing to him, and on a whim, he finally decided to punch the word into his computer, just to see what might come up. It didn't really surprise him to find that the word was actually a name, but he was surprised to find that the name was that of a demon.

He didn't have to search very hard. His very first Google entry explained that according to Jewish mysticism, Namaah was a succubus and fallen angel and one of the four demons of prostitution. She was also supposedly one of the mates of Lucifer. The deeper he dug, the more convoluted the references to her became. Another dead end.

Deacon shut down his computer. It couldn't really be demons, could it? But what if it was? He felt an involuntary shudder along his spine. "Someone's walking on your grave, Deacon," he could hear his old sergeant say. Christ, what the hell had he gotten himself into? He hadn't signed up for anything like this when he'd volunteered for the Preternatural Unit. Vampires and Lycans were one thing; demons were something entirely different.

In that instant, Deacon felt a sudden and unexpected swell of pity for Bristol. The man had spent his entire life trying to run from something no one else believed in. It was no wonder he had so few friends. He'd probably spent a good part of his life trying to convince people he wasn't crazy.

The journals Deacon had found in Bristol's car hadn't been much help either. Bristol's seemed new and contained only a few random entries, mostly regarding his burgeoning feelings for Riley. Deacon had tried to resist reading them, but it was like driving past a car wreck. It was human nature. He just couldn't help but look.

David's journal hadn't been much more helpful. It had been written in a language or code that Deacon couldn't decipher. Something had stopped him from sending it off to the cryptology experts. Some unexplained gut feeling that had urged him to wait.

Deacon wasn't yet sure what he believed, but he knew that for some reason, Riley, at least, believed Bristol, and that was saying something. Riley was a lawyer. She was the most sensible, logical, level-headed woman he knew, even if she was full of estrogen and Lycan blood. If she believed him, there had to be something to it.

Deacon had promised Riley to do everything in his power to find Bristol and get to the bottom of things, and he was determined to keep that promise, but it wasn't going to happen tonight. Somehow he had to get some sleep. Tomorrow was another day.