by Sara Snow
But he would just smile and say, “Sorry, Eli. I’m wiped out today.”
After Georgia and the rest of the crew took off for Texas, the wind began to rise. By the time their car took off, huge gusts were blasting through the warehouse district, rattling all the windows in the building. Though I’d never put much faith in weather forecasts, I checked the news to see what was going on.
Stronger than usual pressure gradients . . . gusts up to seventy-five miles per hour . . . unheard of even in the windiest month in the windiest city . . .
On television, I saw vehicles blowing off of freeway overpasses, street signs blown horizontal, pedestrians clinging to lampposts. Trees whipped back and forth, and branches, ripped from their trunks, went hurtling through plate glass windows and the windshields of cars.
I didn’t understand all the meteorological lingo, but I knew that those winds had blown out windows in Kingston’s study, sending books and papers flying in all directions. The force of the winds made the building itself, as sturdy as it was, seem to rock back and forth like a ship on a stormy ocean. By noon, the howling was so intense that the three of us took shelter in the training room, which had no windows.
“They’re building their powers,” Kingston said, as we sat in front of a big-screen TV, watching the destruction taking place around the city. “Paimon knows all about climate and the wind. He knows how the waters move, how changes in the air and the temperature affect the movements of the weather. Now he’s learning how to turn his knowledge into our reality. This is only the beginning. ”
Jose stood up. He was pale and looked shaky. “I’m going upstairs, guys,” he said. “The rain’s getting me down. I’m going to fix myself a sandwich, then go up and listen to some music.”
“Sure, buddy,” I said. “That sounds like a real good idea. Don’t worry—the weather will clear up soon.”
I sounded like I was sure of myself, but I knew Jose didn’t believe me.
After Jose left, I turned back to Kingston, whose eyes were fixed on the scenes of our wind-whipped city.
“So, this is part of Paimon’s master plan?” I asked.
“Absolutely. This is the warm-up phase. He wants to see what level of destruction he can cause, and on what scale, in a limited area like this. And he wants to demonstrate those powers for you and me specifically, so that we’ll be intimidated.”
“Well, he’s doing a great job of it,” I muttered. The wind had brought heavy rains, which now lashed against the roof and walls, making me feel edgy and claustrophobic. “If he can pull off something like this storm, why does he need Georgia?”
“Her powers will augment his own considerably. In fact, she may be more powerful than he is once she reaches the veritatem. He just wants to make sure that he has her loyalty before she gets that far.”
Outside, the wind roared, angry and demanding. What did Paimon need from Georgia that he couldn’t get from one of the other two kings, or from his minions? Sure, she was a strong fighter—I had seen that myself when we slayed a demon together. But surely there were stronger, more vicious beings who would be eager to serve him.
“Georgia would never join forces with Paimon. I can’t see her debasing herself like that,” I said.
I hadn’t forgotten when Georgia and I took on a hideous demon together. He had been holding a group of little kids captive, selling them off to incubi who would pay a ton of money for innocent souls. Georgia and I had broken into the apartment to liberate the children, and in the process, we had demolished the demon. We had worked together in perfect unison to destroy him. I still remembered her strength and her courage when we ripped that demon apart, and her joy when we returned the kids to their parents.
“I can’t either,” Kingston said. “But the choice is hers, and we don’t know what will happen when she meets him. Paimon is known for his powers of persuasion. The fact that he’s her father will only strengthen his position.”
“There’s a lot riding on this,” I said. “I’m trying to be optimistic here, but what if this doesn’t work out?”
Kingston pointed at the television screen. A semi-truck had flipped over in the wind, causing a massive pile-up on the highway.
“That will become our daily reality, until Paimon intervenes. Once he brings humanity to its knees, he will step in with a solution to the disasters, the chaos, the misery. Then, the mortal realm will accept his help, because they have no other choice. At that point, all hope is lost, unless—”
A crashing noise, followed by a thud, cut Kingston off. We ran out of the room and rushed upstairs to Jose’s room. The boy lay on the floor, his limbs contorting violently. His face was purple, and his eyes had rolled back in his head. I hurried to turn him on his side, holding him steady while he thrashed in my arms.
When the spasms finally died down, he laid still. Frothy spittle ran from his mouth. I wiped the fluid away, then sat him up so he could clear his throat. His eyelids fluttered, then closed.
Kingston crouched beside me, cradling Jose’s head in his hands.
Jose’s eyes opened. He looked at both of us. His eyes scanned the ceiling, as if he were searching for the vision he had last seen in his dreams. A small smile crept across his face.
Then he began to seize again.
Carter
The wind died down as soon as we left the Chicago metro area. Olympia had cast one of her weather spells, and the team seemed content to believe that her magic had calmed the wind.
But I wasn’t convinced. That wind had come on like a freight train, blasting across the highway and filling the sky with towers of dust. In all the years I’d lived in Chicago, I’d never seen anything like it, and the fact that it came on as soon as we set off on our trip seemed like more than a coincidence.
Could Olympia really have stopped that storm with her Trikoni spell? Somehow I doubted it, but I let the team believe that our resident witch had saved our butts.
With Paimon, Bebal, and Abalam breathing down our necks, we needed all the positive thoughts we could get.
Once the wind stopped, Georgia fell asleep. I kept sneaking glances at her, marveling at the small details of her beauty. Her long eyelashes cast shadows as delicate as spider legs across her pale cheeks. Her lush lower lip drooped open as she snored lightly. A thick lock of black hair fell across her neck, hiding the slope where her carotid artery made its way up her throat.
I’d never wanted anyone as much as I wanted Georgia. Yet I never seemed to be able to trust myself to behave like a mature adult around her. I acted jealous, possessive, like an insecure teenager sabotaging his first chance at true love.
Truth be told, I was glad that Jacob had interrupted us that morning. My body didn’t thank me, but my brain knew that it was better for Georgia and me to wait. Kingston had been right—anything that sapped her strength or distracted her from her goal could undermine our mission, and we couldn’t afford to let that happen.
I also couldn’t afford to let Jacob get under my skin, especially now that we’d agreed on a truce. I knew he’d been crushed when he walked in on Georgia and me, but he had bounced back. When it came to this mission, we were on the same wavelength. We couldn’t waste time butting heads like a couple of rutting rams.
In the back seat, Olympia was grousing about being hungry. When Georgia demanded that the witch ride along on this trip, I had known she’d be high-maintenance.
“Are we ever going to take a break?” Olympia asked. “My bladder is the size of a basketball right now.”
“Sure. Since you can’t magically make your urine evaporate, I’ll stop at the next place that has an indoor restroom. Or we could pull over on the side of the road if you’d prefer.”
“I’m also starving.” Olympia sniffed. “And I’m sure Jacob is, too.”
I checked out Jacob in the rearview mirror. He looked comfortable, snoozing away with his head leaning against the window. Georgia was still sleeping, too. But Olympia had a point—we had been driving for sev
eral hours with no rest, and I needed to stretch my legs.
I pulled in at the next available roadside diner, a place that had the inauspicious name of Granny’s Kitchen. The building looked like it had been constructed in the 1960s, and the owner apparently hadn’t thought it necessary to update the signage or paint the exterior. The parking lot was nearly empty, and through the plate glass window, I could see that most of the booths were unoccupied.
Good. We don’t need to attract a crowd.
In spite of the fly-specked window and tattered awning, the team seemed happy enough to pile out of the car and venture inside. The teenage waitress looked somewhat put out to see us, as she had to look up from her phone in order to lead us to a table.
“We’ll sit in the back,” I said, when she tried to give us a booth near the window.
“Fine.”
She picked up the menus that she had slapped down on the table as if we had asked her to repaint the Sistine Chapel. Behind the grill, a cook listlessly awaited our orders.
“Nice choice, Carter.” Olympia shot me a glare before trotting off to the ladies’ room.
“I like it,” Jacob said. “It’s got character.” To demonstrate, he pointed out the coffee rings on the sticky menu.
“Greasy spoons must be your style,” I said. “Somehow, I’m not surprised.”
“Carter,” Georgia said, a note of warning in her voice.
I had parked the car around the side of the building, as far out of sight from the highway as possible. Not that hiding the car would stop any demons from finding us, but I was on alert for anything that might go wrong. Now, I quickly scanned the other customers.
My eyes came to rest on an elderly man wearing a Cubs baseball cap and one of those white crew-neck t-shirts that old men seemed to love so much. The brim of the cap was tipped down over his eyes, casting his features in shadow. His shoulders were thin, curved in around his thin rib cage, and his hands shook as he raised his coffee mug to his lips.
At first, I assumed it was just an elderly local spending time at his usual outpost. Then, he lifted his unsteady head and looked straight at me. I saw the brilliant light gleaming in his eyes.
That baseball cap triggered a memory.
Where the hell did I know that Cubs cap from?
Of course, there were Cubs caps all over the place. Back in Chicago, I saw them everywhere. But something about this guy’s weathered face and glittering gaze under the brim of the cap made me do a double-take.
“What’ll you have?” The waitress had returned. Georgia and Jacob both ordered a BLT with fries. I was browsing the menu for something that didn’t turn my stomach when my phone signaled that I had a new text message.
Call me. It’s important.
The text was from Eli.
“Sorry, I need to make a phone call. I’ll be back in a second.”
The waitress yawned and walked off with her notepad, clearly unconcerned about whether I ordered, starved, or curled up and died.
I hurried out of the diner to make my call outside. I didn’t want the team to overhear, in case there was trouble at the warehouse.
And there was.
“Jose had another seizure after you left,” Eli said. “A bad one. We couldn’t get him to stop this time. We knew it had to be one of Paimon’s crew, because the voice he was channeling sounded so familiar. Kingston tried to banish him, but the bastard wouldn’t leave.”
“How is Jose now?” I asked.
“He finally calmed down; now he’s sleeping it off. I think he’ll make it. We tried to take him back to the ER, but he wouldn’t have it. Probably wouldn’t have been safe, anyway—we had the storm from hell today. Literally.”
“I know. We caught some of that on the way out of the city.”
“Kingston says it was Paimon pulling some weather stunt to test his power.”
“Yeah, I thought as much. He’s going to try to intimidate us, and more importantly, to separate us. But if he hasn’t perfected his power yet, that means we still have a good chance to fight off anything he throws our way. So, did Jose say anything important after the seizure?”
“He said something in Latin after he came back, in that same weird growl.”
“That had to be Bebal.” I would never forget Jose’s last episode, when he talked about the unseen becoming seen. “Did Kingston translate the Latin for you?”
“Yes—‘the blood of two will conquer three’.”
The blood of two will conquer three? More riddles. That’s all we need.
“Did Kingston have any idea what that meant?”
“No. Or if he did, he didn’t tell me. That voice made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. But Kingston seemed pumped up about it. Like it made him more confident to know that the demons are determined to get Georgia.”
“Well, he could be right,” I said. “But it’s not very reassuring when you’re the one they’re chasing. We know they want Georgia—but they only want the rest of us dead. Did they leave any other messages?”
“Not yet, but we’ve been writing down everything Jose says. We tried to record him, but the audio is always distorted.”
“Good. Keep writing. Anything else I need to know?”
“Well . . .” Eli hesitated for a second, as if he weren’t sure he should tell me. “He said that he dreamed about Georgia last night, and by morning, the dreams had gotten so real that he couldn’t stand them anymore. He dreamed that one of the demons was holding him down, choking him, threatening to strangle Jose if he didn’t tell him where Georgia had gone. That’s the last thing he remembers before the seizure started.”
“Damn. Poor guy,” I muttered. “So, what are you going to do?”
“We’re keeping an eye on him 24/7, taking turns staying with him when he sleeps. Kingston is sure he’s going to start channeling again. We just want to make sure we’re with him when it happens.”
“Perfect. Don’t let him out of your sight.”
I glanced back at the diner. Wind rattled the rickety awning. Thunder clouds gathered in the distance, and the air felt heavy with the threat of rain.
“Listen, Eli, I need to get going. We stopped to grab a bite to eat, but the weather looks like it’s going to get bad again. Call me later with an update on Jose, okay?”
“You bet.”
I hesitated for a second. “And Eli? Keep an eye on Kingston, too. I’m worried about him.”
“Me, too,” Eli said.
I hurried back to the diner. Our waitress was handing out plates of food to the group. Olympia and Georgia were laughing hysterically, and Jacob wore a pleased smile. He had obviously just said something that cracked the girls up.
The old man had relocated to the next table. His place setting and coffee sat in front of him, exactly the way they were before. The only detail that had changed was the Cubs cap, which was now tipped slightly back, giving him a better view of Georgia and Olympia.
Oh, shit. How could I have forgotten where I saw that fucking cap?
Georgia picked up her sandwich and was preparing to take a bite when I stepped in to spoil the party.
“Could you get us some to-go containers?” I asked the waitress. “Please?”
“Seriously?” Olympia pouted. “I haven’t even touched my salad.”
“Seriously. All of you go to the car. There’s a storm moving in.”
I didn’t really care about the storm—I had driven in foul weather before. But that old man had given his game away, and I wasn’t going to hang around a second longer than we had to.
The beleaguered waitress reappeared with four Styrofoam containers. I handed her cash to cover the bill with an extra twenty for her trouble. The gang hurriedly shoveled their food into the cartons, then slid out of the booth. Even Olympia must have known I was on edge because she didn’t give me any more grief.
Outside, fat drops of rain splattered on our heads as we rushed to the car. Everyone piled in. Before they had fastened their seatbelts
, I gunned the engine and hauled ass out of the parking lot.
18
Carter
“Do you want to tell us what that was about?” Georgia asked.
She took a bite of her BLT and munched away with her usual enthusiasm for any food that was placed in front of her. Watching her eat like that, as if the plate might be yanked away at any moment, always tugged at my heart. She had never known the kind of security that most kids took for granted. When Georgia was growing up, no source of comfort could be trusted.
“I told you. There’s a storm coming in,” I said. “It looks bad. And the service at Granny’s sucked.”
“You could have at least let us stay long enough to order dessert,” Jacob complained. “The way you dragged us out of there, you’d have thought there was a pipe bomb under our table waiting to go off.”
“Well, it suits me fine. I wouldn’t want to be stuck in that greasy spoon waiting out a storm,” Georgia said. She looked out the window at the ominous clouds, and her forehead wrinkled. “This shitty weather had better not hold us up.”
“We’re not going to let the storm hold us up,” I confirmed. “We’re going to let it push us forward. The sooner we get to El Paso, the better.”
Olympia leaned forward to reach between the two front seats. She squeezed Georgia’s arm. “Don’t worry about the weather, Georgia. I have a spell that’s practically foolproof against rain like this.”
Georgia sighed. She didn’t seem reassured. Her frown deepened, and she began to twist a long strand of her hair around her index finger.
“It would have been smarter to wait it out,” Jacob objected. “At the rate those clouds are rolling along, we’re not going to be able to outrun the rain. We’ll be in the middle of a deluge soon.”
I gritted my teeth and gripped the steering wheel harder. Jacob had been on my last nerve from the moment we left the warehouse, and if he gave me any more of that attitude, that nerve was going to snap.
“Listen, we need to keep moving. This isn’t just a bad weather front—it’s part of Paimon’s plan. He wants to scare us, to show us what he can do. But he’s also got his minions out there hunting us. Those rogue demons don’t care if we make it to Texas or not, and they’re happy to capture her at any point on the trip. I don’t want any of us to be killed before we reach El Paso. If you don’t like it, you can get out of the car and hitchhike back to Chicago.”
