Earthbound

by Melora Johnson

  I lunged at the taller demon, my hands headed for his face. It wasn’t much of a chance, though it was more than I would get upstairs.

  He must not have thought I’d really do it because we landed in a heap on the ground. I heard a hiss as my hands made contact. An unholy chorus screeched in my head, and I had the impression of a cubist painting, everything out of proportion and alignment. The energy in me reached out to set it right. The cat hissed and spit to my left, then the female demon screamed. I couldn’t look but heard a small thud that I feared was my new feline friend.

  I was being lifted by Asphodel and flung away when a car screeched in and came to a halt, the door flew open. I rolled and sat up, then scrambled into a crouch. The male demon I had attacked didn’t move.

  I glanced at the car to see Matt. How had he even found me? I eyed the open car door, but I couldn’t abandon Trish. I rose and faced Asphodel.

  “No!” Trish shouted. I looked back to see her launch herself at the female demon as she leveled a gun at me. The cat lay nearby, a casualty of the female demon, I assumed. I couldn’t see if it was still alive. Trish and the demon fought. I heard the report as the gun fired, and they fell to the ground, still struggling.

  “Trish,” I cried.

  The gun went off again, and they both stayed down. A moment later, Trish rolled away, clutching her arm.

  Asphodel seethed as he stared at me, and I realized the veneer of civilization was gone, leaving his face hideously scarred. His head was scabbed over and nearly hairless. This was a reflection of his disfigured soul, not some physical ailment. I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

  Matt had left the car and joined me with a double-handed sword.

  “Fool,” Asphodel said. “Do you think I’ll let her go so easily when what I want is in my grasp?”

  The elevator dinged. I expected to see reinforcements pour out. It opened, but no one was upright. They were sprawled in a heap on the floor of the elevator, Zyriel amongst them. What had happened? I wanted to go to him, make sure he was okay, but I was otherwise occupied at the moment.

  Matt engaged Asphodel as I skirted their fight and grabbed Trish, helping her into the car. I started toward the elevator, but Zyriel opened his eyes a slit and gave me a wink. I took that to mean he did not want to be rescued.

  Asphodel now had a sword of fire in his hands. I didn’t think Matt’s sword, no matter how blessed, could stand against that fire.

  I reached over the back seat with my upper body and sprung the lock on the suitcase holding Matt’s demon-hunting paraphernalia. What to grab? A cross? Some of the holy water? Then I saw the relic I knew was real and grabbed the vial with one hand and some holy water with the other.

  I was suddenly yanked out of the car and tossed to the side. I looked up at Asphodel from a prone position and managed to flip the lid off the holy water and fling it upward, dousing him with it. He grinned even as it began to burn, and steam rose off him.

  I looked around wildly for Matt, fearing the worst. He lay, crumpled on the cement, to my right.

  Asphodel loomed over me. “Do you really think such a paltry thing will stop me, angel?”

  His voice reverberated now with the grating tone of a metal gate, long overdue for oiling, glamor truly gone. I had managed to keep my grasp on the relic case as I fell and shielded it with my body, so I could open the vial without him seeing. I palmed the relic. This time I was prepared and resisted the pull of memory in the wood.

  Where to target him? Treating him like a vampire was a fair bet. The closer to the heart, the better, but anywhere in his flesh with such a powerful relic should give him pause. I waited until he moved forward and cowered beneath him.

  “Please,” I gasped. “Please don’t hurt us. I’m begging.”

  He laughed as I held my hands up as if in supplication, then stopped when I jammed my hand against his thigh. He started to howl. It built into a scream as he staggered to the side and fell to the ground, writhing.

  I scrambled over to Matt. He lay on his side, unconscious. I had to get him out of there. He didn’t complain as I rolled him over, but that didn’t seem like a good thing. I’d have rather had him awake and swearing.

  I gazed around. The screaming had stopped. Asphodel had disappeared. I had a feeling it wasn’t the last we would hear of him, but he needed healing just as much as Matt, even if he was an immortal being.

  How was I going to get Matt back to the car? Maybe I could heal him enough to get him there under his own power.

  I laid one hand on his left shoulder and one on the right side of his abdomen, as if applying defibrillator pads. Something squished under my right hand, and I grimaced, but sent a surge of energy from one hand to the other. His body arched as he gasped. His eyelids fluttered open, and he coughed.

  I gave him a hand to sit up, and he wrapped an arm around his abdomen. “Can you get to the car with some help?”

  “I think so,” he rasped.

  I got him to the car and in, then closed the door and slid behind the wheel. I glanced back at Trish. I couldn’t worry too much, I would check her once we were out of harm’s way. I had a moment’s hesitation about leaving Zyriel behind, but he knew what he was doing. Me interfering might cause him more trouble than good. I glanced over at the elevator. They were beginning to stir. Time to get out of Dodge.

  Chapter 17

  Matt insisted on taking a turn driving. After a healing session several miles outside of the city for both him and Trish, I had driven for a couple hours while he slept. Then he woke, asked for food, and had taken over. Trish slept in the back seat, not having quite the constitution Matt did.

  As I watched the countryside pass, my mind kept coming restlessly back to my parents, concerned whether my mother was okay. I hoped the ‘people’ after me had not homed in on her and my stepfather. On top of that, as we got closer and closer to my childhood home, more memories ghosted through my mind. After my father had passed away, Mom had eventually met someone else. He had seemed like a good guy the few times I’d interacted with him, but we weren’t a family, to my way of thinking. Maybe I just had too many expectations.

  I sighed, shaking my head unconsciously.

  Matt squeezed my hand. “Hey, what’s up?”

  I looked over at him. “What are your parents like?”

  Matt grinned. “My parents are… interesting. I guess the closest you Americans would come to explaining them would be hippies. Although maybe the newer term permies would apply. My parents have a homestead in New Zealand, which is based on self-sufficiency. Dad put in fruit trees and bushes. He was just putting in olive trees to start pressing his own olive oil when I left home. Anything that will grow year after year is his passion. Mum cans her own vegetables and fruit. We raised Highland cattle, sheep, pigs, and chickens. Mum even spins the wool into yarn herself. Dad tries to trade for anything he can. We went without some things that might have been nice to have, but we never lacked for anything. It was a good way of life. Christmas gifts were homemade or secondhand. There was little we bought new.”

  It sounded wonderful. I was practically salivating over the Laura Ingalls Wilder vision. I had devoured those books when I was a kid, had felt there was something lacking in my own home. “Would you say your family was loving?”

  A soft smile graced his face. “Definitely. Mum and Dad are huggers like you couldn’t imagine. Never let you get away without a hug goodbye. Dad never let me quit anything I started until I’d seen it through. Got downright annoying at times, but he was a world-class encourager.”

  “It sounds wonderful, the opposite of what I grew up with. My parents were… distant.” That was probably being generous, but I didn’t want to sound like a whiner.

  “How so?”

  I shrugged. “I went home for Thanksgiving a couple years ago. My mother opened the door. Her eyes widened, and her mouth opened in an O of surprise. It hadn’t occurred to her that I might come home for the holiday. She was also smiling when she
opened the door, very unusual for her. She had a glass of wine in her hand. Then I heard a male voice laughing and wondered who it was since my father had been gone for almost five years at that point. We went in. There was a tall man with blond hair and a beard, well-trimmed, in denim work clothes. He smiled and shook my hand.”

  “That must have been a bit of a shock.”

  “You have no idea. My mother was a cold fish as far as I was concerned. She and my… stepfather met while they were both volunteering.”

  “That’s right, you said she volunteered at a bunch of places. What was it? The arts council or the shelter?”

  I laughed. “Neither. Habitat for Humanity.”

  “Your mother volunteered for Habitat for Humanity? I can’t imagine the woman you’ve described swinging a hammer.”

  “Yeah, I know. It must have been a bet or something with her friends. It turned out my mother had volunteered with Habitat for Humanity and met Jake on the site. His construction firm had provided all the materials and volunteered a lot of their time on the house that was being built. He had inherited a large company from his father and had worked his way up through the ranks to be the head. He still dressed and acted like a construction worker unless he was taking a meeting with a potential client. Anyway, he had asked my mom if she’d like to join him in volunteering at the soup kitchen for Thanksgiving, and she agreed.”

  I slid my thumb under the shoulder harness of my seat belt and ran it up and down. “I had never seen her laughing or smiling like that when my father was alive. I was a little resentful, to tell the truth. So, they went off to their Thanksgiving soup kitchen stint, and I went back home.” I was still a little embarrassed by how I’d acted. My mother had every right to be happy.

  “Tell me about your father,” Matt said.

  “Well, he was tall, had really short dark hair, wore glasses, and always wore a suit.” I shrugged. “I didn’t feel like I knew him that well. He would occasionally bring me home toys, but he was never much of a hugger. He would smile, and sometimes I would turn around to find him watching me. I felt his… benevolence, but it was always tinged with a bit of sadness.”

  “Was he at least home on the weekends?”

  I thought for a minute. “Kind of. I mean, he was there when I woke up on the weekends. The housekeeper would fix him a poached egg on Saturday while he read the paper and drank his orange juice and coffee. On Sunday, it was eggs benedict. Then, he would go off somewhere. Sometimes it was golf with guests from out of town or business contacts, sometimes it was skeet shooting. We would entertain at the house before my… ability manifested itself, then he started taking people out. I think he was nervous something would happen, that I would accidentally touch someone and hurt them. We didn’t know at that point it only had to do with demons. We just thought I’d done something. It wasn’t until later I found with animals it could work another way.”

  I shook my head. I was rambling. “Anyway, no, he wasn’t home much. He was gone when I got up in the morning during the week. Sometimes he was home for dinner; more often, he wasn’t home until nine or ten p.m. Then, on the weekends, he was out of the house. Often my mother was too. Either she was working with a charity group, or playing the society wife and helping to entertain his business contacts.”

  I glanced back over my shoulder at Trish in the back seat and saw her eyes were open. She looked like she was trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible, as if she were afraid we’d toss her out of the car. “Hey, how are you feeling?”

  “Okay,” she said meekly, sitting up.

  I had a feeling she didn’t know what to expect. I smiled reassuringly. “There’s more food in the bag on the floor if you’re hungry. We’re almost to my parents’ house.”

  She nodded, and her eyes darted away, then she reached down for the bag. I suspected it was more to have something to do than because she was truly hungry, but I could have been wrong.

  When we got to the exit for my mother’s town, Matt signaled to turn off. “Listen, I want to scope things out before you go up to the front door. I’m concerned her house could be under surveillance.”

  “You think they might have figured we’d come here?” It was one of the things I worried about, and I didn’t like hearing that he had thought the same thing.

  He grimaced. “It’s not impossible. I just don’t know.”

  “Okay.”

  I directed him around so we could park a few blocks away from my mother’s home. We left Trish in the car and snuck through some yards to my mother’s house. After Matt had done a little reconnaissance, we approached the back porch. I went up the steps onto the old cement patio and knocked.

  My mother appeared at the door. She flicked on the light and then quickly unlocked the door. “Allyson.” She seemed surprised to see Matt with me. “Why are you knocking at the back door?”

  I studied my mother, checking for any sign of distress or fear. She appeared fine, but so different from when I was a child. She was still a short woman, with shoulder length fine blond hair, rather flat. Her face had always held a look of perpetual pained distaste or dislike. Now, she looked so much softer, happier. It didn’t fit with the picture in my memory.

  “This is my friend, Matt,” I said, observing the social niceties first.

  “Nice to meet you, Matt. Won’t you both come in?”

  “I think we should maybe talk alone for a bit,” I said, glancing from my mother to Matt.

  “Okay,” Matt said. “I’ll just… take a walk.”

  We watched Matt melt back into the night, then I followed my mother inside.

  “Shall we go into the sitting room?” my mother suggested.

  “Of course,” I replied. Can’t possibly sit in the kitchen, like normal people. I followed her into the room. The house had changed a little since I’d last been there. It was homier and more lived in. A framed photo of her sat on a glass end table, and a nubby green blanket was tossed carelessly across the back of a chair. There were little knick-knacks on the built-in bookcase. Paperback novels now sat side by side with the books chosen for their intellectual statement by my father.

  We sat down on a champagne and pink floral couch.

  “You’ve changed your hair,” she said. “It’s very…becoming.”

  I just stared at her for a minute.

  “What?” my mother finally asked.

  “I’m sorry, I just can’t get over how much more relaxed you look these days than when I was a child, when you were married to Dad.”

  She sighed and smiled slightly, then braced herself, leaning back against the sofa, hands on knees. “I knew we’d have to have this talk one day. Allyson, I married your father because he was an up and coming executive. I believed he’d be a good provider. All I had to do was do my best to provide him a gracious and well-kept home, to make sure things were to his liking, that his suits were ready for work every day. And then I did what I thought I was supposed to, I volunteered in various society charities like the art council and the ladies’ auxiliary at the hospital, raising money for improvements to the children’s cancer ward. I wasn’t completely useless, you know.”

  She had gone on the defensive, making me feel a bit guilty. “I know, Mom. Those are very important things, all of them. You do good works that benefit a lot of people.”

  Her eyes widened in surprise. “Well, thank you.”

  “I just wish our home life had been a little different. A little more like other kids had.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I cringed inside and smoothed the arm of the couch, fighting the urge to retreat from the discussion. It wasn’t easy to be open, even with my own mother, perhaps especially with her. “Like television shows with the warm families where they hugged and ate dinner together around a kitchen table while they laughed and talked.”

  She scoffed. “That’s television, Allyson. People don’t really do that much.”

  I sighed heavily. “Some do, Mom. Some do.”


  She shrugged. “Well, that wasn’t us. Still, I do agree, I wish we had a warmer family life, too.” Her eyes wandered the room as she searched for the right words. “When we had you, your father loosened up. He smiled more and came out of himself. He had more of a connection with you than he did me. I guess I resented it a little bit.” She bit her lip.

  I was floored. “Dad was not a hugger. The most I remember was a pat on the head or the shoulder,” I protested.

  “Yes, but while you were playing, he would watch you and smile. He clearly felt a connection to you. I could see how much he loved you, and it was a different kind of relationship than he and I had. So, I did my duty, and that was how I showed my love for your father, by fulfilling my role as his wife. Dear, you have to understand—”

  “But I don’t,” I protested.

  “Your father was a good man, that was why I married him. It was a social contract of sorts. I promised to care for him, take care of the house and be a good wife. He promised to provide for me and any children we had. It wasn’t a love match, though, and I felt old before my time, tired. I didn’t know how to be loving, and your father didn’t ask it of me. I didn’t know how to be that way with you. When you came along, he was more open and caring with you.”

  “Not by much.”

  “Still, it was more than I’d ever had, from my parents or from him. I was jealous. It made me more dissatisfied with my life, but I still didn’t know exactly why. It wasn’t until Jake came along and showed me what I was missing that I began to open up and explore the way I was and the way I had been with you.”

  She laid her hand on my arm. “I hope we can learn to have a more loving and open relationship, like we should have had from the beginning. Maybe it’s too late, but I don’t think it is. Perhaps we’ve both found men who can teach us to share that with others? I hope you’ll have a better family life with Matt.”

  Family. It wasn’t something I’d even considered with Matt. Could we? Would we want to? Would I want to bring a child into this world when we were fighting demons and trying to banish them? They had a tendency to fight back. Would I be able to stand risking a child that way? And if that was my whole purpose in being here, then how could I have a child? When my purpose was fulfilled, would I be able to live a normal life, or would I die? I simply didn’t know how it all worked.