“Thanks, Ben,” she said.
She turned and started walking away.
“Felicia,” he called after her. She turned back. “I wouldn’t get your hopes up. Sassy’s not exactly a reliable adult. As painful as it may be to admit, you’re probably just going to have to wait until she grows up.”
Felicia stared at him for several seconds. She tried to believe he wasn’t just as an asshole, that he was actually naïve. But, God, he was judgmental prick.
“You don’t know her, Ben,” she said. “I know you think you do, because you grew up with her. But you don’t really know her at all.”
Then she turned and stalked away from him, shaking her head.
She sighed. She shouldn’t have asked him for help. She should have known Sassy had been right about him – that Ben was too sanctimonious, too convinced he was always correct to do anything meaningful.
As she emerged from the parking garage, she pulled her phone from her pocket and tapped the Lyft app. She typed in the details and waited for a driver.
The sky was overcast, and back above a ground, the breeze nipped at her cheeks and through her too-thin coat. Felicia grimaced. She was distraught enough. She didn’t need the weather piling on. Damn her anyway for not checking the weather before she left the apartment.
As she waited for her Lyft, Ben pulled out of the garage in his black Camry. He didn’t look at Felicia. Either he didn’t see her standing there, or he was deliberately ignoring her. A lump came into her throat. She had to swallow three times to fight back the tears that threatened to form again.
Why wouldn’t he help? Why couldn’t he figure out that this was really serious?
I wouldn’t get your hopes up. Sassy’s not exactly a reliable adult.
What an asshole. He didn’t understand his sister at all.
Three minutes later, a tan Ford Focus pulled up. Felicia opened the backdoor and got in.
“Hi,” the driver said. “I’m Ben.”
Felicia sighed. Of course. This Ben didn’t look anything like Sassy’s brother – he was an older, rotund, white guy in a plaid cap and a beard that made him look like Santa Claus. But having the same name drove the spike deeper into Felicia’s heart.
“Nice to meet you,” she managed.
God, maybe Sassy had been right about Ben all along. Maybe he really was too much of a holier-than-thou shithead to really care about Sassy’s well-being. As much as she didn’t want to believe it, Felicia feared he wouldn’t actually do anything to find Sassy.
And she was in trouble. Felicia knew that much. Her mind hadn’t been right after the incident with Gerard Dulac. She’d reacted the way she always did – close down, push everyone away, hide. That wouldn’t end well.
Reflexively, Felicia shuddered at the memory of being held at Dulac’s Kentucky horse ranch. She expected she wouldn’t get past that experience without serious counseling of her own.
But what she could tell a therapist? “A vampire kidnapped me and tortured me to lure my girlfriend to his fortress.” Who would believe her?
With an effort, she flushed thoughts of Gerard Dulac from her mind. She had a bigger problem – finding Sassy.
If Ben wouldn’t help, where else could she turn? Who else even gave a damn about Sassy?
The answer popped into her head immediately. Ash cared. And Ash had resources neither Ben nor Felicia could hope to muster.
Shit. She really didn’t want to involve Ash. He was the one who got them into this mess in the first place. The last thing she needed was for him to start mucking about in Sassy’s disappearance.
But there was no choice, was there? It was obvious Ben wasn’t going to do shit. If Felicia wanted to find Sassy, she needed help.
And Ashrael Shinoch was the only person on Earth who would be willing to give it.
Three
The Come On Inn was everything I feared it would be. Dirty, in a bad neighborhood, and skanky. The sheets and towels were threadbare, the furniture was ugly, and the place smelled of sex. The manager was a gross, fat, White dude, who leered at me as I passed him bills for a one-week stay.
But, at least I now had a private place, where I could lock the door and let my defenses down. As soon as I was inside, I unpacked my sword. I’d felt kind of naked with it hidden away instead of slung over my shoulder like usual, especially in an unfamiliar city.
I sat on the edge of the bed and tried to figure out what my next move should be. In Cincinnati, I’d had a job, friends, and a reasonably safe place to live. I didn’t have any of that here. I was starting completely over. I wasn’t sure at all how to do that.
But I did have a lot of cash, so that would buy me some time.
I needed a job. What could I do? In Cincy, I’d worked at The Dragon’s Lair game store and taught Kenpo. I briefly considered finding a Tracy’s Karate studio and trying to get on as an instructor.
But there were several problems with that. Kai, my old sensei, had never been able to pay me enough for me to live exclusively on working for him. So it was unlikely the local Tracy’s would be able to do any different. Plus, before they’d let me teach, they’d want to know about my old school, and who I’d learned from. And that would make it possible to trace my true identity. So that was out.
Next, I thought about getting a job at a game store. Chicago was the second-largest metro in the country. There had to be at least a dozen game stores around it, didn’t there?
But most of those kinds of places were sole-proprietorships with just the owner and maybe one trusted employee. They likely weren’t hiring, and they were probably paying shit for only part-time work if they did have an opening. And unless the owner was shady enough to pay me under the table, I’d need an ID and social security number for the W-2 form. That didn’t work, since I was trying to disappear.
So what then? Walmart? Same problem with the W-2. Plus, you know, Walmart.
Maybe I could be a skip-tracer like Dog the Bounty Hunter. I was a badass. I could catch assholes who dodged their bail.
But you probably needed a license for that kind of work. Same problem with being a P.I. And as much as I enjoyed Jessica Jones, I didn’t relish the idea of taking photos of cheaters. That was pretty much the job. Not only was it skeezy, it meant you broke a lot of hearts.
How did people do this shit? How did you disappear and establish a completely new identity? Whom did you contact for a fake ID and a new Social? It wasn’t like those kinds of services advertised on Yelp.
I sighed. I’d known I had to get the hell out of Cincinnati as quickly as possible to protect Felicia and stay away from Big Brother Asshole. But now that I’d managed that part, I just didn’t know what the hell to do next.
It seemed the best thing to do was Google it in incognito mode. But my phone needed charging before I could seriously dig into this kind of research. I plugged it in and set it on the nightstand.
Then I leaned my sword upright against the bed, so I’d be able to get it easily. Jesus, I’d become a real paranoiac. I suppose, though, when you’re on the run, paranoia sort of goes with the territory.
I lay back on the bed, which was lumpy as all shit, and tried to divine a solution to my problem.
About three seconds later, I passed out.
I dreamed again. This time, I knew I was dreaming almost right away. I was sitting on the El. I don’t know how I knew it was the El, since I’d never been on it in my life, but I knew. Dreams, you know?
The car was totally empty. I couldn’t see anything out the windows. It was just me sitting in a dirty train, going somewhere unspecified.
I didn’t know how long I’d been aboard. I couldn’t remember getting on, let alone where I had bought my ticket. I could have been traveling for seconds or years.
As I wondered what I was doing here, the train slowed. The brakes moaned, the car shuddered, and I could at last see out the windows. We approached a worn-out old platform, with rotted planks and the shelter leaning to the left, threa
tening to collapse altogether.
As the train came to a halt, it was obvious this stop had long been abandoned. No one had been here for years from the look of it. It was like the engineer had forgotten he was supposed to bypass this forgotten station.
The doors opened. The wind whistled in – high-pitched, loud, and foreboding. Dread swam in my stomach and brain. I pushed back in my seat, shrinking away from the open door, barely aware I’d even done it. My Kenpo badassery was nowhere to be seen. I was scared. Raw fear gripped me – like I wasn’t just watching a horror movie; I was in it.
I had no idea if I was supposed to get off here, but I did not want to. Everything about that sad, abandoned station told me I was perfectly good sitting right where I was.
At last, the doors shut. The train coughed and spluttered before finally starting forward again. I breathed a sigh of relief. My anxiety didn’t lessen, but I felt better not being at that deserted stop where everything was dead and forgotten.
I turned my head to the right, and my father was sitting next to me. His eyes were wide with worry.
“Cecily,” he said. “You can’t stay here. It isn’t safe. Get out while you can.”
As if that wasn’t freaky enough, he disappeared seconds after closing his mouth. He was there, and then he was just gone. Once again I was all alone on the train as it rocked over the rails.
I looked out the windows. I could see this time, but I didn’t recognize anything. I wasn’t in the city anymore. I was out in the suburbs, I think. But all the houses were dark, like no one was home.
When I returned my gaze to the car the freaky old woman who had promised to pull my skin off and eat my heart was sitting two rows away. She leered at me and nodded.
I reached for my sword, but it wasn’t there. My heart pounded in my chest. She smiled sweetly at me, but her eyes were that same black from the last dream when she was laughing at me. I had to get the fuck out of there. Even though she was just sitting there, I had to get out.
The El pulled up to another station, and the doors slid open again. I didn’t hesitate. I launched myself from my seat and dashed out.
There was no platform. I was suddenly standing in a spooky, old neighborhood that looked like it should be in a Scooby-Doo cartoon or maybe a zombie-apocalypse movie. The houses were all dilapidated, and the street was vacant and filled with trash. An eerie white fog rolled over the patchy lawns, seeming to emanate from the houses.
I turned around, and the El was gone. There was no station at all, let alone the train I’d gotten off.
Feeling naked and vulnerable, I started walking forward, looking for shelter. Not one of those damned houses looked like any place I wanted to hide, but I kept hoping things would get better.
They didn’t. Every one of them looked like they belonged in Psycho or Insidious.
And then I noticed shadows in the fog. Dark figures moving along with me. I couldn’t see any details. They were just black and indistinct – like people staying just out of sight, enshrouded by the mist.
Shit. I was in a zombie-apocalypse film.
My heart hammered in my chest. I could just tell these fiends were driving me towards some terrible destination, that they were setting me up for the kill.
I stopped in the middle of the street. I may have been scared, but I was not about to let them have the upper hand on me.
“All right, you assholes!” I called. “I’m tired of this B-movie bullshit. You want some? Come get it!”
As if they had just been waiting for the challenge, thirty or forty demons, not zombies, emerged from the fog. Red-skinned and with huge maws and maybe a hundred teeth each, they rushed me.
I dropped into a fighting stance and prepared to kick some ass. As the first one approached, I jumped up and drove my best sidekick into its knee. The joint shattered, and the fiend went down screaming.
Landing just in front of him, I threw a whipping backfist at the next asshole and made contact with the back of its skull, sending it reeling.
But a third demon snaked four huge arms around me from behind and tackled me to the ground. I hit my forehead on the pavement, and my vision swam. Desperate not to be eaten, dismembered, or just plain killed, I fought to escape as my head pounded. But it was no use. Those arms were too large, too strong. They held me like iron bands.
The beast rolled over onto its back, exposing me to the rest of the horde. They fell on me at once. With my arms pinned, I had no way to resist. Hundreds of teeth sank into my flesh, and tore off chunks of my arms, legs, and face.
***
I woke up screaming. I could still feel my muscle being torn away. I flailed at the imaginary beasts for several seconds before I realized I was actually okay. Everything was just as I’d left it. I was sitting up on the lumpy bed of my shitty hotel room. My sword was within easy reach. I was alive. Everything was fine. Sort of.
Jesus Christ, I needed some real rest. How the hell was I supposed to be able to focus and recover from my ordeal, if I kept having freaky-ass nightmares?
I felt like ass. I was panting from the terror of the dream, and my head roared. I had no idea how long I’d been out, but it felt like I hadn’t slept at all.
However, I had no desire to lie down again – not after what I’d just experienced. Dreamland had been total shit of late. Maybe a little break from it would be good.
I hadn’t showered since the morning before I’d left Cincinnati. I was totally foul. Maybe hot water and some soap would feel good.
The bathroom was a lot nicer than it had any right to be. There was white tile on the floor, and a large shower with a glass door. I turned on the water, and steam rose from it immediately. At least the water was hot in this place.
I peeled off my clothes and stepped in. The minute the water hit my skin, tension just drained out of me and followed the water down the pipe. God, it was luxurious. The steam relaxed my brain, and the water soothed all the hurts hiding in my muscles. Even the two vampire bites I’d received from Gerard Dulac seemed to ease. Maybe it was the bacitracin Felicia had put on them when she’d first dressed the wounds, but I felt as though the water were washing away all my wounds – even the guilt I felt about abandoning her.
I’m not sure how long I showered. The water never lost its pressure or heat. My skin was pruned when I finally turned off the faucet. I shook my head, sending water droplets everywhere and luxuriating in finally feeling human again.
Opening the door, I reached for a towel. The air was steamy outside, but I’d been in so long it wasn’t cold. Regardless, the towel was thick and large and comfy. I smiled happily as I stepped out. I patted the terrycloth over my hair and then wrapped it around my body.
The freaky old lady from my dream stood right in front of me.
I screamed.
“How did you get in here?” I demanded.
Her only response was another of her trademark sweet smiles.
“God damn it!” I said. “Who the fuck are you, and what do you want?”
“I just came to say goodbye, dear,” she replied.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but that was not it.
“What?” I said.
“Knock-knock,” she replied.
***
With a terrifying bang, the door to the hotel room burst open, waking me. I was still dressed and lying on the bed. I barely had time to realize I’d just experienced one of those shitty dream-within-a-dream sequences before a gargantuan, ugly-ass demon burst through the door and leaped at me with its arms out ready to shred me.
Four
The gruesome son of a bitch was, like, seven feet tall. It had this gross, pink skin that was covered in blackheads. Its upper arms were muscular, but the forearms were made of tentacles. A nasty-looking black beak sat where the elbows should have been, and the tentacles reached for me.
I rolled off the bed, just before the giant demon landed where I’d been. I snatched up my katana and yanked the sword from its sheath, holding the b
lade before me and putting myself in a defensive stance.
The thing turned and faced me. It had two enormous, black, compound eyes set on the sides of its head, and a series of sharp, black spikes that began between the eyes, where a nose should have been and worked their way in regular intervals towards the back of its skull. Its mouth opened sideways and contained two rows of green teeth.
It was an absolute horror, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to shit my pants or puke at the sight of it.
The demon sprang straight for me, reaching again with those freak-ass tentacles. I moved to stab the bastard, but its appendages undulated around the blade, trying to find purchase on my arms. One of them wrapped around my left wrist, burning my flesh as its suction cups latched on.
I brought my sword around quickly and lopped the slimy thing off before more of them could get ahold. The demon screamed in agony as green blood jetted from its wound, spraying all over the already-filthy carpet.
Angered and maybe a little scared, the dumb bastard fell back on a distance attack. It spit fire at me, hitting me square in the chest.
This was a good thing. My special power as a Nephilim is to be able to absorb magical energy and convert it into some other purpose. So I sucked in that fire, extinguished it, and transformed it into a bolt of magical whupass that I unleashed from my sword.
A beam of blue light discharged from my katana and caught the monster full in the face. It went sailing back across the motel room, hit the wall, and slumped to the floor.
Never one to let a wounded opponent get back up, I launched myself at the fiend, preparing to drive my sword into its brain pan.
But before I got there, those disgusting blackheads on its face erupted, sending what turned out to be sharp, black quills in my direction. I was moving too fast to avoid them. Several struck me in the neck.
I immediately felt woozy. Poison like Novocaine surged through my blood. My eyes drifted out of focus. My legs suddenly felt like rubber. It took a supreme effort of will to keep my grip on the katana.
Personal Demons Page 4
