Fire Devil

by J L Bryan

  The guy glanced at it, shook his head, and resumed carrying a candy cane the size of a walking staff over to a pickup truck full of giant decorations.

  “Hi, this is Michael Holly, Melissa's brother,” Michael said into his phone. “She's in trouble, and I need your help. Please call me back as soon as you hear this.” He hung up.

  “Who was that?”

  “The voicemail of some girl named Lorna,” Michael said. “Must be one of her friends. Not one I've met, though. So it's nobody from her dance team. Maybe a soccer player?” He shrugged and dialed the next number on his list.

  We stepped inside every restaurant, shop, hotel, and motel that we passed, showing Melissa's picture around. Hostesses and clerks shook their heads at us.

  Michael checked more numbers, reaching the voice mail of a girl who identified herself as “Cammie.” He left a similar message.

  Another number connected him to Screamin Mimi's, a Savannah pizza joint.

  “People don't answer unknown numbers,” Michael said. “This would be easier if I had Melissa's phone.”

  “Keep checking your phone and credit card accounts, too,” I said.

  “I am.”

  I paused in front of a display where a parrot roughly the size of a panda bear sat on a perch in front of worn rope rigging and a Jolly Roger flag. The parrot had an eyepatch, and its head kept moving back and forth, its wings rising and falling. It was some kind of mechanical decoration meant to catch the eyes of passing tourists. Effective.

  “Hey, let's stop here,” I said, pointing to the menu taped inside the window. “We should eat.”

  “I don't have much of an appetite.”

  “But you know food will help you heal. And give you energy. Which will help you keep up the search for Melissa.”

  “Okay, but...Flappy Jack's Pirate Pancake House?”

  “Sounds filling, huh?” I said. “Come on.”

  After we showed the hostess Melissa's picture, and the young woman shook her head and shrugged, we took our seats inside. At my request, we sat near the front, with a view of the street, so I could keep an eye on the pedestrians out there. I seriously doubted Clay was still in town, but in the unlikely event that he was, I wanted to increase our odds of spotting him.

  The nautical theme continued with ship's wheels and nets on the walls. Little wooden treasure chests held the salt and pepper shakers on our table. The place was crowded. I checked the crowd, looking to see whether Clay had decided to stop in for pancakes and bacon before going about his secretive evil agenda.

  “Do you think we should get the police involved?” Michael asked in a low voice. He nodded across the room, where two uniformed policemen were eating. The tall skinny one had a poached egg and black coffee; the shorter and chubbier one had French toast and orange juice. “We could use more help finding her.”

  “It would be nice, but I don't know,” I said. “We obviously can't tell them the truth, so what do we say? As a missing persons case, it's not much of an emergency. You saw her last night, she drove off in your truck by herself, there was no kidnapper involved.”

  “But she's still a minor,” Michael said.

  “For how long?”

  “Until her birthday. In...three weeks.”

  “Right. I don't think the police would do much about this, you know? Unless you want to report your truck as stolen. Then, if any police run her plates—”

  “She'll get arrested,” Michael said. “And then we'll know where to find her.”

  “Yeah...”

  “You don't seem convinced.”

  “Yar, welcome to Flappy Jack's!” A waiter in a pirate hat, with a stuffed parrot wobbling on the shoulder of his vest, interrupted us. “Would you like to try our Straaaaarrrberry Special? That's straaaaarrberry pancakes with straaaaaaarrrberry syrup, with a side of straaaaarberries—”

  “Coffee for me,” I said, looking at the yellow treasure-map-style menu. “And a Flappy Fruit Bowl.”

  “Just water, thanks,” Michael said.

  “Oh, come on, you need your strength.” I skimmed the menu. “Have the Flappy Jack Big Pirate Booty Platter. It's got some of everything.”

  “A Fruity and a Booty,” the waiter said, collecting our menus. “Fine choices, mateys. Fit for a pirrrrate king!”

  “Caribbean or Barbary?” I asked.

  “Arr...Barrrbarrry, I guess...I'll be back with your bevarrrrrages,” he said, casting me an annoyed look before he left.

  “So...the cops?” Michael asked.

  “Maybe if we were back in Savannah, where we know some of them,” I said. “If we report your sister for theft here in Tennessee, that could kind of mess up her future. For a felony, that close to her eighteenth birthday...”

  “We'll work it out, though. What kind of future does she have with Clay controlling her? And we're just wasting time, sitting here.”

  “I'm just looking out for you,” I said. “I know you don't feel like eating, but you have to.”

  The waiter brought us coffee and water, both served in hefty ale mugs. I sipped mine, glad for the caffeine and the warmth.

  “Here's the other thing,” I said, speaking quietly and leaning close across the table. “If Clay does get pulled over by a cop, what happens then? The cop thinks he's caught a teenage girl who's swiped a family member's car, no real threat. But if Clay decides that cop is an obstacle, getting between him and his goals...”

  “Then it could be a cop barbecue,” Michael said, sighing. “Not good.”

  “Unless we portray your sister as armed and extremely dangerous,” I said. “In which case—”

  “They could use overwhelming force, and my sister dies,” Michael said. “Especially if Clay fights back with fire.”

  “The problem is there's nobody out there trained in this,” I said. “Nobody who knows how to deal with the supernatural.”

  “Well, there's you,” Michael said, giving me a small smile.

  “There's not nearly enough of me, though.”

  “True. I wish we could clone you. I could use two or three more of you in my life.”

  “Right. We'd drive you crazy.”

  “Also true.” Michael called the next number on his list. Nobody answered, not even voice mail. He plugged the number into a search engine instead. “It's a Savannah nightclub called Drop. Looks like it's in an old warehouse by the river. She's too young to go there.”

  “I wouldn't be surprised if Clay was drawn to seedy, dark, loud places,” I said.

  “So, all the times she would start to freak out, and run off...” Michael said. “I was starting to think she was getting into drugs. What was that about?”

  “Maybe that was when Clay struggled to keep control,” I said. “The times when Melissa was resisting him from within.”

  “Do you think she could do that?” Michael frowned, even more deeply than the frown that had been etched on his face all day. “Do you think I could have done that? It just felt like being caught in a nightmare. Like you're in the middle of a house on fire, and people are screaming, you're blinded by smoke...there's no windows, no doors that open outside, just one room after another full of fire...”

  “Sounds like my nightmares,” I said. “There's some reason to hope Melissa can resist, though. He was weakened when he moved into her, and he has to depend on her knowledge, her mind, to understand the world. So he can't keep her completely buried. But we definitely can't count on her to get out of this on her own, either. We need an exorcist.”

  “Exarrrrrcist!” Our waiter plopped down our food. “Is someone possessed? Is it you?” He looked at Michael, then at me. “No, it's you, isn't it?”

  “Don't try to get involved in our conversation,” Michael said, in an unusually icy tone for him.

  “Sorry,” the waiter said. “I mean, uh, parrrrrrdon me. Would you care for some maple sarrrrrrruup—”

  “We're fine!” Michael snapped, and the guy backed away, holding up both palms dramatically, the stuffe
d parrot on his shoulder bobbing.

  “Eat up,” I told Michael, who looked at his Flappy Jack's platter—bacon, sausage, pancakes, fried green tomatoes, biscuit—and sighed. It was way too much, especially for a guy who claimed to have no appetite.

  I had better luck eating my strawberries, grapes, and orange slices. He didn't want any of that either.

  We hurried through the meal and resumed canvassing the town. Nobody claimed to have seen her. I wasn't surprised.

  By the time I got the text that Jacob and Stacey were approaching Foxboro, we'd circled almost all the way back to our hotel. We went inside to wait for them, both of us feeling restless and impatient to figure out where Melissa had gone.

  Chapter Three

  Clay

  The impossible speed exhilarated him, and he hurtled through the winter cold, out of the mountains.

  Vast concrete canals had been dug across the countryside, high-velocity roads for the metal wagons. He would never have believed humans could travel so fast without dying.

  Indeed, some could not—he'd passed the twisted ruins of a wreck some miles back, and he'd slowed for the flashing lights of the fire and police engines, as his host knew was necessary.

  He could feel Melissa within him, like a captive bound and gagged in a dark closet, grunting and kicking to be free. He could not afford to put her all the way down, to fully crush her spirit into silence. He needed her knowledge of this world.

  His mind straddled atop hers, like a rider on a feisty horse...but she was not yet entirely broken, and tried again and again to buck him off. He would not allow it, yet he admired her strength and her wildness. He yearned to consume it, to breathe it in like hot smoke from the flames.

  For now, though, he must keep her tame, like a beast, or a slave.

  Anton Clay had a fair amount of experience taming and punishing slaves. It was an art form he'd studied in great detail in life.

  The night was freezing, but he kept the windows of the truck open anyway, letting the air whip against his borrowed flesh, the blond hair streaming across his face. That much was right about this body, at least—the beauty, the lightness of hair and eye, angelic. He was glad to have a beautiful, supple, energetic form to support him, even if being within a female body was beyond strange.

  He was alive again, in a fashion. He'd left behind the cold, thin gruel of his interminable existence back home, and was finally at liberty to seek new sensations, new adventures. His savior had called him forth like Lazarus from the grave.

  The air grew drier as he drove west; he could feel it.

  Ahead, he sensed his destination—or at least, his first stop—like a dull red glow over the horizon, guiding him. It was the same way he'd sensed that the ancient ring had special, powerful properties. Properties he could use.

  He wore it now, gold, embedded with emeralds, hanging a bit loose on Melissa's finger. Ancient occultists had trapped a soul inside it, twisting that soul into a hideous reptilian killer. He was awed that such a thing was possible, but if a soul could be trapped in an old building or cave, he supposed it could be trapped in an item of jewelry.

  The reptilian spirit had been of great assistance so far. The ring had been a spectacular bonus for Clay, an immeasurably valuable unexpected profit, gleaned from his close stalking of Eleanor and his pretense that Melissa was eager to be her friend and gain her acceptance.

  In fact, Melissa felt nothing of the sort for Eleanor. Clay had frequently struggled to keep Melissa from surging up in a fury when Eleanor was near; if she'd been allowed to move or speak for herself, even for a moment, his designs would have been upset.

  Perhaps, after Melissa had toughened enough in the fires of Clay's soul...after she was sufficiently broken...he would bring her forward to enjoy Eleanor's prolonged suffering and death. That death would be one for savoring; Clay had been denied the pleasure far too long.

  He'd glowered impotently for years over Eleanor, the girl who'd escaped. Beautiful Eleanor, and of course her mother Isabella, both of them with long dark hair and fair skin like moonlight...like Elizabeth, his beloved Elizabeth, whom he had loved in life and joined with in death.

  Clay relished taking the whole family, as he'd done with Elizabeth in life. He had killed Elizabeth's husband rather offhandedly, with a knife, getting the old man out of the way; Charles Sutton had been ugly and old, many years older than his bride, and the man had no beauty whose destruction Clay could relish. As far as Elizabeth's slaves, he barely recalled killing them, either.

  But Charles and Elizabeth's three sweet young children, two boys and a girl, had been beautiful, like their mother, and had screamed with such energy and life as the flames consumed them.

  The most succulent of deaths had been Elizabeth's and his own. He'd held her close while the flames closed in. She had struggled and kicked, squirmed and scratched, but he'd refused to release her from his fatal embrace. He had kissed her neck as they burned.

  The pain of burning alive was excruciating, but Clay could think of no greater expression of his love for Elizabeth than dying with her in such a way, the flames of his passion consuming her entire household and home, her entire existence, so that the two of them could be joined forever in the ashes and the smoke.

  Elizabeth's spirit remained with him, within him, among the multitude he contained. She was merely a pale shade now, a scurrying thing that feared him and obeyed. It was so unlike the determined, independent woman who had consented to have an extramarital affair with Clay, and later remained steadfast in her determination to end that affair, driving Clay to grief.

  Even weaker were the thin shades of her husband and small children, who crept around like silent, frightened mice at the back of his mind, among the other families.

  For there had been other families. It was the mothers that drew Clay's attention, again and again, calling him forth from below the earth where Elizabeth's house had stood. He would move unseen in their homes, watching, sometimes for years, watching the curves of their bodies grow and ripen once they gave birth to children. He enjoyed the women most when they were thick and soft and their flesh burned so well; and he enjoyed the bright little lights of their burning children.

  Something large glowed in his rearview, and he felt his pulse quicken.

  Clay knew he was not alone, nor was he the top predator in the jungle.

  Other things waited out there, in the darkness, watching him; twisted immense things that called to him from below the earth. He had sensed them more than seen them, like a swimmer in the deep ocean sensing monsters below.

  He had sensed them all during the long years he'd been trapped in the earth, but they had troubled him little.

  Now that he was on the loose, far from his own territory, he could sense them more strongly, vast beings that watched him at a distance, pursued him slowly.

  He had no name for them, but he feared them.

  However, the fiery red glow in his rearview was only the sunrise, not an immense being coming close to investigate him. He relaxed.

  He glimpsed the buildings of a small town as the highway passed it by. He wondered if there were any houses there, where he might find the kind of woman he liked.

  He licked his lips and shifted in his seat. He was free now. He didn't have to wait for the living to come to him. He could take what he liked.

  Forbear, whispered the voices in his mind, his new advisers from the ancient world, the long-dead wise men. Restrain yourself from the distraction of such indulges. Our destination awaits.

  He added more speed, as though he could somehow outrun his own mounting, aching desires.

  Chapter Four

  Ellie

  “When Stacey and Jacob get here, I'll take them over to the museum to help collect my gear,” I said to Michael. We sat in chairs with heavy wooden backs, near a small adobe fireplace in the hotel lobby.

  “Can't that wait?” Michael asked, looking annoyed.

  “It can if we get a lead on Melissa's loca
tion,” I said. “Until then, we might as well collect gear, because something might be useful against Clay.”

  “It just feels like a waste of time. Packing up all those cameras and monitors takes hours.”

  “So I'll grab Stacey for that,” I said. “You keep going through and calling Melissa's phone contacts.”

  Michael took out his phone and called the next number on his list.

  Stacey and Jacob entered the lobby. I eased myself to my feet, still sore from the previous night.

  Stacey dashed over and gave me a crushing hug. Jacob followed behind her, looking tired, rolling a heap of suitcases, nearly all of them Stacey's.

  “Ellie! I'm so glad you're okay,” Stacey said.

  I winced at the tightness of the hug, and she drew back, looking me over. “Are you okay, though?”

  “I'm great for being in the middle of a crisis,” I said. “But the museum case is just about wrapped up. All we need to do is head over, load up all the gear into the van, then hit the road, once we figure out where Melissa went—”

  “Whoa, there, tiger,” Stacey said. “We just got up extra early and drove seven hours to get here while there was still some daylight left. I can't dive right into disassembling a job site and then leaving town. I need a hot shower and a meal. And a pedicure. And shoulder massage. And not necessarily in that order.”

  “What did you say about Melissa?” Jacob asked.

  “I'll tell you upstairs.” I turned back to where Michael sat. He was in the middle of a phone call.

  “Yeah—yeah—yeah, okay, thanks, Bethany, but if you hear anything—no, I'm sure she's fine—no, nobody's sent a ransom note, I doubt that's going to—just let me know if you hear from her, okay? Or any news about her? No, I don't think I've met your cousin Teri—no, I'm seeing someone—I have to go. Thanks.” He ended the call as Stacey wrapped him in one of her big hugs. She's a big hugger.

  “Who's Bethany?” I asked, as we headed to the elevators.

  “One of my sister's best friends,” Michael said. “Until the last month or so. She says Melissa's hanging out with different kids.”