by S. M. Reine
He grabbed the double ought.
Another hit. The door splintered.
Anthony slammed his shoulder into the crack to keep it from breaking entirely. His hands shook as he tried to get a round out of the box. He dropped it. Ammunition spilled across the carpet.
Swearing, he dropped to the floor and held the door shut with a foot, back pressed against the foot of Betty’s bed. He slid open the loading port on the bottom of the shotgun.
Anthony counted out the shells he could reach as he loaded it—no time to panic—and pumped once. The chamber wasn’t full, but if he needed more rounds to kill that thing, he probably wouldn’t live to do it anyway. He kept the number of rounds hovering in his head—five—and let go of the door.
He had only an instant to get on one knee, shotgun braced against his shoulder, before the monster broke through. It rushed at him on all fours, its nails tearing into the carpet.
He angled down and squeezed the trigger.
BLAM.
The recoil knocked the butt of the shotgun into the pad of his shoulder and he rocked backward. The monster’s arm disappeared in a spray of blood and pellets smacked into the floor.
He pumped the action and an empty casing went flying. Four .
It screamed a terrible scream that made his eardrums throb, rearing back on its stubby legs. Anthony braced properly this time and squeezed the trigger again.
BLAM.
Suddenly, the monster didn’t have a face.
Three rounds.
With no flesh, Anthony could see all too well the pellets that had buried into its skull. There was blood everywhere, tassels of skin, the dribbling remnants of its left eyeball. Some of the pellets had implanted in the drywall behind its head and Anthony’s ears were ringing.
It raised onto its remaining forearm and dragged its carcass toward him.
He stood, pointing the muzzle of the shotgun straight down at its head, and pulled the trigger once more.
BLAM.
The monster flattened without the back of its skull.
Two.
Was it dead? Anthony didn’t care to find out. He pumped again.
BLAM. Pump. The casing hit the carpet. BLAM.
Empty.
Anthony lifted the shotgun and tapped the remnants of the monster with the toe of his shoe. Its mangled body didn’t react. It occurred to him, distantly, that his only pair of nice jeans were soaked in blood and that he couldn’t hear anymore.
But the monster was dead. Very dead.
“You can come out, Betty,” he called. He wasn’t sure if he actually yelled or not—he couldn’t hear his own voice.
The closet door at the end of the hall opened and Betty crept out. Her mouth moved, and he knew she was speaking, but all he heard was a sound like a vibrating tuning fork.
She stood in the doorway, gaping at the body, and her mouth kept on moving. Judging by her expression, he was glad he didn’t have to listen to her.
The quality of the air in the room changed, and the remnants of the monster dissolved into the carpet.
Anthony leapt forward and tried to grab what used to be a finger—for what, he wasn’t sure—but it crumbled in his hand. Even the blood and chunks of intestine on his pants evaporated into puffs of smoke, leaving him as clean as he had been before the fight.
The entire thing was gone in seconds, and only the mess of shotgun damage proved there had ever been a fight.
Betty was agape. “Oh...my...god. What just happened?” It sounded as though she was whispering.
“I have no idea,” Anthony said. Biggest understatement of his life.
“Dad is going to be pissed when I tell him what happened to his carpet.” She stared at the floor—the empty shell casings, the chewed-up shag, and the pile of ash that had once been a body. Then she looked up at her cousin, the shotgun balanced between his hands, and a grin broke across her face. “That was so cool!” She punched his arm. “You’re practically G.I.-fucking-Joe!”
He dropped the shotgun and collapsed on the end of her bed. Anthony’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking. “Fuck.”
“Oh man, I think that might have been the most incredible experience of my life!”
Anthony worked his jaw around, trying to clear out his ears. His hearing had almost entirely returned, and the ringing was replaced by...silence.
“Why is it so quiet?”
Betty stopped quivering with delight to look at him. “Huh?”
“Where are the sirens?”
“There aren’t any.”
“That thing was loud. If someone had phoned in a disturbance, we’d have at least one car by now.”
Betty peered through her window to the silent street beyond. “I don’t know. There’s nobody outside, so maybe no one’s home—or the cops could be called away on something else.”
“Or something big is going on,” Anthony said. “I think someone just tried to kill us.”
“Kill us? With a deformed monkey? Why?”
Anthony used Betty’s bed post to haul himself into a standing position. “Something weird was happening with the coven. James said there were—I don’t know, demons or something. He called in an exorcist to help him. Didn’t he say that she was a friend?”
Betty nodded. “Yeah, but that was about Marisa’s kid.” A light clicked on behind her eyes. “Oh. Oh . But that’s impossible, I would know if...”
“Elise is the exorcist,” he finished. “She’s been injured. She’s not talking about why.”
“Aren’t priests the only ones who can do that stuff?” Betty asked, starting to pace. She didn’t let Anthony respond before continuing. “Okay, let’s say something is happening—maybe Elise is an exorcist or maybe she isn’t. It already attacked Marisa’s family. It attacked us. For all we know, it could have attacked Elise and James last night. Maybe that’s why she ditched you.” She gasped. “Maybe it’s after our coven!”
“That’s kind of a leap.” He laughed. “This is ridiculous.”
Betty rested her hands on his shoulders. “Anthony, not to sound patronizing, but you just killed a gargoyle on my carpet.”
“Good point.”
She left the room, searching through the rubble that had been her kitchen. “We need to find out if anyone else has been attacked. Help me find my cell phone?”
Anthony nodded. “Yeah, sure. Who’s left?”
“Those two witches that live up at the lake,” Betty said. “Windsong and her husband, Phoenix. Then there’s Morrighan, but she left to visit her grandparents in Virginia this morning. Stephanie lives in the area, but I don’t have her number. The only person in town is Ann.”
He plucked Betty’s pink phone from the spilled coffee pot. “Found it.” Betty hurried to remove the battery, but it was too late—something inside the phone fizzled. She sighed.
“Okay, we’ll just have to use the neighbor’s house phone to call everyone.”
“Ann lives just up the hill from the university. I’ll go check on her. Want to come?”
She surveyed the damage around her. “No. I should patch the window and clean up all that glass.”
“Call her and tell her I’m on my way. Whatever’s going on...it’s serious. Do you think you could get a hold of Elise too?”
“I’ll make sure she’s okay,” Betty said. She grabbed the shotgun from the bedroom and gave it to him, as well as a new box of shells. “I’ll make sure everyone’s okay. Call me when you find Ann—we should get together and figure out what’s going on. She’s smart. She’ll know.”
“Okay,” he said, dropping the ammo into his pocket. “Watch yourself.”
He ran out to his Jeep and jumped in, stowing the gun behind his seat. Anthony suspected he was scared—probably even terrified—and he just couldn’t feel it yet. He hadn’t stopped shaking. It wasn’t the time to freak out. Later, the shock of what had just happened would probably sink in, and he could really freak out.
At the moment, though, he had a purpose,
and that was enough to keep him moving.
13
Drip...drip drip...
Elise’s head throbbed in time with a distant beat. Her shoulders and ankles ached. Her eyes felt sticky.
Drip drip...
Where was she?
“James?” she croaked. Her throat was too thick and dry to speak properly. She swallowed and smacked her lips, rolling her tongue around in her mouth. “James?”
Drip...drip...
Something was running down her arm. She tried to lift her head against gravity, which seemed to have tripled while she was unconscious. The plain gray ceiling had a drain in the middle. The floor was covered in exposed beams.
Wait. No. That wasn’t right.
Elise was hanging upside down by her ankles.
She squinted at her arm in the dim light. Blood trickled out of the inner corner of her elbow, trailed down her hand, and dripped off her fingertip. That sound was her blood hitting the floor. Never a good sign.
She relaxed and shut her eyes to collect herself. It wasn’t the first time Elise had been captured by a demon. This was like riding a bicycle. A hell bicycle made of damned skeletons and fire, but a bicycle nevertheless.
Counting silently to ten, she opened her eyes again to study the room around her.
It was empty. No furniture, which meant no obstructions to use as hiding places. She knew she must have been disarmed, but she double checked her waist anyway. Even her holsters had been taken away. She wasn’t surprised to find that the stone staff was missing.
Flexing her abs to sit up, she held onto her ankles and examined the bindings. Silk ropes. What kind of demon used silk ropes? They were pulled tight against the iron hook by her weight, but nothing prevented her from untying them. She lifted herself on the hook with one hand while she picked at the knots with her fingernails.
The loss of blood made her weak. She had to rest twice before she could unravel the knots enough to get her first leg free. The second was short work after that, and she lowered herself carefully to the floor.
Changing orientation after being upside down for so long made her head rush. She braced a hand against the wall for a moment.
Deep breaths.
The only light came from the crack underneath the door. It looked like she was in an unfurnished, windowless basement, and her own blood was oozing toward the drain in the floor.
She finally got a good look at the wall she had been hanging on, and she jerked her hand back. The sigil from Lucinde’s forehead had been painted in blood on the wall. It stretched from floor to ceiling. Elise had been hanging in the middle of it.
All that blood couldn’t have come from her. She searched her body for injuries and only found a nick in the veins of each arm. It was already clotting.
She sniffed it. Definitely blood.
Someone moved on the other side of the door.
Elise crouched behind it, twisting the ropes around her fists and stretching them tight to form a garrote. Her heart wasn’t even beating fast. A strange kind of calm settled over her—the calm before the killing.
It swung open. She prepared to jump.
And Ann stepped in.
Elise brought the ropes down in front of the witch, yanking them against her throat to pull her back against Elise’s body.
She wrenched the ropes back. Ann choked.
“Elise—”
Turning her fists to tighten the ropes, Ann’s words became incoherent gurgles. She slapped against Elise’s hands as they sank to the floor together. The witch’s feet kicked helplessly against the concrete.
Elise nudged the door open with a toe to look in the hall. Empty. Shouldn’t there have been something guarding her?
Doubt crept in as Ann’s struggles grew weaker. What if James had sent her?
Ann gave strained spluttering noise.
Elise released her. She collapsed.
“What are you doing here?” Elise asked, crouching over her body. She gave Ann’s legs and sides a brief pat, searching for weapons, and didn’t find anything.
The witch sucked in several hard breaths. Her ruddy face had broken out in sweat.
“They aren’t kidding when they say you’re like a human weapon, are they?” she gasped. “That really hurt. I thought you were going to kill me.”
“I was,” she said. There was no point dancing around the subject. “I thought you were working for Death’s Hand. Did James send you? Is he okay?”
“James is fine for now.” Ann sat up and smiled.
The situation felt completely wrong for a rescue. Elise wrapped the rope around her fists again. She recalled seeing those bright blue eyes under a ski mask at the cemetery—the same eyes that smiled at her now.
“James told me you’re an herb witch,” Elise said. “But you’re the necromancer, aren’t you?”
Ann shrugged. “Kitchen witchery is easy to fake.” When Elise tensed, she held up a hand like it could stop an attack. “There are more than a dozen fiends in the house above us.”
“Why?”
“I’m not a fighter. It makes sense to have guards.”
“No. Why are you working with Death’s Hand?”
She stood and dusted herself off. Ann’s color was returning to normal. “Vedae som matis doesn’t think I should tell you very much. She’s usually right about things. Look, I like you a lot, Elise. I could have drained you dry to paint that sigil, but I used mostly pig’s blood instead. We don’t have to fight. There’s enough room in the new world for both of us.”
“New world?” Elise tried to make herself sound calm, even though she was watching the doorway and mentally calculating the odds of escaping twenty fiends unarmed.
“Sure. I know you’re in Reno because of the Warrens, and you thought all the power from them would prevent your enemies from locating you remotely...right?” Ann didn’t wait for a response before continuing. “But that protection doesn’t come from the Warrens. There are angelic ruins below them.”
She already knew that, but having her suspicions confirmed made a sick kind of chill settle over her.
“So this is a takeover.”
“Vedae som matis is trapped in Hell, Elise. You know what it’s like down there? It’s...well, it’s Hell. All she needs to break through to this side is a corporeal body, and then we can build a kingdom together.” She took the stone staff out of her pocket and gave it the kind of loving look most girls would reserve for a boyfriend.
Her opinion of Ann immediately shifted from “this girl is misguided” to “this girl is insane.”
Ann stepped forward, holding out a hand. “We can still be friends. When vedae som matis takes over, she’ll need a council, and I can suggest you and Betty if...”
“If what? If I agree to be a blood donor?”
“No,” she said. “I’ve got all I needed from you. My house is done being anointed. Vedae som matis was right about that, too. Your blood is really potent.”
“You can’t use me as a vessel. I’m not a witch.”
Her smile went painfully wide. “Who says I wanted you? I poisoned James for a reason, you know.”
I am the cold kiss of Death...
Elise joined her fists together and swung, bringing both down on Ann’s head.
The witch screamed as she fell, bringing up her arms to protect herself. It wasn’t good enough. Elise kicked her in the face, and her nose snapped. Blood sprayed across the concrete.
A gray blur hurtled into the room, striking Elise in the stomach with all the power of an oncoming train. Her back slammed into the wall.
Over the fiend’s head, Elise saw Ann try to push herself up, then collapse again.
Elise kneed the demon in the stomach, pushing it away from her. She ran for the door, but the fiend grabbed at her shirt with its clawed hands. She stuck her hip out and used its own momentum to throw it over her leg. It lost balance, and Elise jumped over Ann, pausing only to pick up the staff.
It made her hands burn, so
she stuffed it in the back pocket of her jeans. She ran up the stairs and burst through the door to the first floor of the house.
The walls were lined with pictures. None of them featured Ann.
Something scuffled in the basement behind her.
Elise darted to the nearest room, throwing the door open. Empty bedroom. There was a bookshelf in front of the window. She opened another door—closet. Its shelves were covered in fragments of bone.
The fiend launched itself out of Ann’s room, and she dodged. It hit the wall instead, and the drywall cracked.
“Get the kopis!” Ann shrieked from the other room. “Get her!”
Elise rushed into the darkened living room. It stank of brimstone and blood, and a trio of possessed corpses sat beside the battered couch. They didn’t register Elise’s appearance, even though she recognized two of them as the ones she had fought in the cemetery the night before.
But the pair of fiends huddled in the corner in the shadow of the television, eating a bloody scrap of meat, didn’t fail to see Elise.
One of the fiends darted at her, and she backhanded it, sending it flying into the wall.
Fire burned a path down Elise’s thigh. She cried out. The second fiend flung shreds of her jeans from its claws and slashed again, but she leapt away just in time. The backs of her legs bumped into something, and she stumbled. Her thigh gave out.
Elise hit the ground. The possessed ones animated and stood, staring at her with empty eyes.
She scrambled to her feet as they lunged, kicking a fiend squarely in the face. It flew backwards with a little squeal, striking the lone window through the curtains and sliding to the floor.
Elise flung open the front door, and light flooded into the living room. The remaining fiend recoiled, covering its bulbous eyeballs with tiny scarred hands.
She hurtled outside into fresh air and freedom. She ran to the end of the street and stopped short—Ann’s house was on a hill overlooking the city, and below the hill stood Our Mother of Sorrows cemetery.
