Sudden Death

by Donald Hanley

  She didn’t want to accidentally hurt her, I argued.

  That’s what she said, but methinks she doth protest too much. She didn’t call for help, after all. They only stopped because you barged in here after Olivia caught them. Daraxandriel got down on her hands and knees to search for her sneakers under the bed, providing Olivia and me with an excellent view of what she was wearing under her skirt, namely nothing at all. Haven’t you ever wondered what Dara and Olivia do in bed?

  No, I lied. “Let’s go,” I told Daraxandriel as she stuffed her feet into her shoes, “Dad’s waiting.”

  And Melissa.

  Shut up. “Amy!” I called through the doorway. “Come on, we’re leaving!”

  “I’m staying here,” she shouted back from upstairs.

  “Don’t be stupid, it’s not safe.” Daraxandriel and Olivia followed me out to the stairs. “Hurry up!”

  I tapped my foot impatiently until Amy finally appeared at the top of the stairs. “I’m tired,” she grumbled. “I’ve been following Dara around all day.”

  “You can sleep at the police station.”

  “In one of the cells,” Olivia muttered.

  “Fine,” Amy capitulated with ill grace, “but you’re making this a lot harder than it needs to be. Let’s just go over to Mrs. Kendricks’ and get it over with.”

  “Your confidence in our ability to beat the incubus is truly inspiring,” I told her, rolling my eyes. “Let’s go.” I headed down the stairs, accompanied by another raspberry.

  15

  Stereotyping gets a bad rap in today’s society. Any time you make a statement about someone based solely on their appearance, you’re immediately accused of prejudice or bigotry or insensitivity. To be sure, there are a lot of bigots and insensitive jerks out there and racial profiling is a serious issue, but don’t forget that stereotyping works both ways. It’s just as wrong to presume someone has some positive qualities because of their appearance. People of Asian descent have to be really tired of other people assuming they’re good at math.

  Stereotypes evolve over time as well. If you see a newborn baby bundled up in a pink blanket, you’ll naturally assume it’s a girl. One hundred years ago, however, pink was preferred for boys, since it was felt to be a stronger color than blue. Nowadays, of course, in the current climate of political correctness, there’s a strong possibility that your little gender-neutral bundle of joy will be swaddled in green, yellow, purple, chartreuse, puce, or plaid.

  In the absence of any other information about another person, a stereotype gives you a starting point to deal with that person, but you have to remember that it’s only a first-order approximation, in the same way that pi is roughly 3. Every individual is unique and their appearance is actually the least useful guide to their underlying character and capabilities. In other words, make very sure Mr. Nakamura can add correctly before you hand him your taxes.

  This time Amy sat in the front beside Dad while I chaperoned between Melissa and Daraxandriel in the back seat. Melissa kept glancing past me and sighing wistfully, while Daraxandriel’s tail discovered a new fondness for fondling my leg. It must be attracted to the Dread Lord’s curse, I supposed uneasily, shoving it aside again. Maybe that’s why it liked Olivia so much before.

  Olivia herself crouched behind me in the cargo area, grumbling about how crappy her life was turning out to be. Considering she was dead, she had a point, but I was still convinced I had it worse than she did. Unlike me, she couldn’t be killed again.

  We just turned onto Milton Street, heading for the police station, when Dad’s phone rang. He frowned at the number and answered. “Jack Collins,” he said. He listened and then glanced over his shoulder at me. “It’s Stacy.”

  “Let me talk to her.” I took the phone and a deep breath. “Stacy –”

  “What the hell’s going on, Peter?” Stacy sounded angry and frustrated at the same time, which wasn’t all that unusual for her. “First Mother tells me something happened to Dad and now you leave me that crazy message to stay away.”

  “Wait, what?” As far as I knew, Agent Morgan just sent Prescott out of town to get him out of the way while she confronted Mrs. Kendricks. Did she send him into a trap? I wondered uneasily. No, that doesn’t make sense. He left before the incubus got her. “What happened to your dad?

  “I don’t know! Mother just said I had to come home right away and then she hung up on me. She isn’t answering her phone.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “I don’t know, an hour maybe. What difference does it make?”

  I let my breath out in relief. “Stacy, your mom’s being controlled by an incubus. He’s making her help him capture all the witches in the coven. She lied about your dad to get you to come home.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” she argued. “That would never happen. Mother can banish an incubus with one hand tied behind her back!”

  “Not this one,” I told her. “He has Dr. Bellowes’ ring.” The moment of stunned silence on the other end of the line was followed by a stream of furious profanity that would have made a pirate blush. I held the phone away from my ear until she finally wound down after a minute or two. She hadn’t repeated herself once. “Are you okay?”

  “No, I’m not okay! Do you what an incubus does to women, Peter?” I heard a male voice murmur something in the background. “Just shut up and drive, Todd!” she snapped.

  “Todd’s with you?” I asked doubtfully. “Does he know about, um, you know –?”

  “Yes, he knows,” she sighed heavily. “What are you going to do about this, Peter?”

  When did this become my responsibility? I wanted to complain. I’m not a witch. “We’re getting the free witches together at the police station to come up with a plan,” I said instead. “Where are you now?”

  “We’re on our way back from Austin. We’ll be there in a couple of hours.”

  “All right, call us when you’re close. Maybe we’ll have this taken care of by then.” I sincerely doubted that but a leader needed to be confident in front of the troops. It seemed to me that I’d read something like that somewhere.

  “I swear by the Horned God, Peter, if I find out this was all your fault, I’ll – well, you’re going to think all those demon lords got off easy.” She hung up on me before I could protest my innocence.

  “She’s, um, a bit upset,” I said as I handed the phone back to Dad.

  “So I gathered,” he said dryly. “At least she’s still on our side.”

  “For all the good that does us. She’s a hundred miles away.” I wondered if Susie could teleport Stacy directly to the police station. I had no idea what her range was.

  She brought us back from Hell, Little Peter reminded me. Austin should be a piece of cake for her.

  “So any ideas on how we’re going to lure the incubus out in the open?” Dad asked.

  “There’s only one thing he wants that badly.” I pointed at Amy and Dad eyed her doubtfully. “Not her, the journal.”

  “So we just leave it lying in the middle of Milton Park and wait for him to grab it?”

  “He’d just send Mrs. Kendricks or one of the other witches to get it for him.”

  “Unless it was protected by someone they couldn’t touch,” Melissa suggested.

  “Like who?”

  “Like a very powerful witch.” She looked me right in the eye when she said that.

  “No, absolutely not! You don’t have any defensive spells, you’d be a sitting duck!”

  “I have Shadow Step,” she argued, “and Dark Shield.”

  “And Dark Void and Soul Reaper and Black Fury and twenty other ways to kill him instantly, along with my body! He won’t risk getting anywhere near you.”

  “Peter Simon Collins had the right of it,” Daraxandriel nodded somberly. “The bait for our trap needs must withstand the most potent powers of the witches yet be vulnerable to the touch of the incubus.”

  “Is that even possible
?” I asked doubtfully.

  “I know of one such among us.”

  “Who?” I demanded, and then I realized who it was. She had the strongest wards of anyone in the witching community. “No! No way! We’re not putting Susie in danger like that!”

  Daraxandriel’s glowing eyes blinked at me in surprise. “Nay, I do not refer to the waif. I am minded of another, who has never suffered a mark from demon and witch alike.” She tilted her head meaningfully to the seat in front of her.

  “Amy?” I had trouble wrapping my mind around that concept. “She doesn’t have any powers. Metraxion made sure of that.”

  “Yet she has come through our many trials and tribulations unscathed,” Daraxandriel countered.

  “Because nobody pays any attention to her! She’s just this annoying – thing – lurking in the background!”

  “They wouldn’t dare attack me,” Amy sniffed haughtily. “I’m the future Queen of Hell.”

  “I don’t think the witches care about that,” I retorted. “In fact, they’d attack you because of that. Assuming they believed you in the first place, which they don’t.” They did, actually, since Metraxion admitted she was the spawn of the Dread Lord during our last confrontation, but I wasn’t in the best of moods right now. Amy just hmphed at me dismissively.

  “Let’s talk to the other witches first,” Dad said firmly. “We need to know what all the options are before we decide to toss someone to the lions.”

  The grumpy silence that followed that suggestion lasted all of thirty seconds before Dad’s phone rang again. His eyebrows lifted when he looked at the display and he answered with a simple “Cruz.”

  “Cruz?” I echoed. “Shouldn’t she be asleep?” Our next shift started in less than seven hours, although I strongly suspected I wasn’t going to make it.

  Dad took his hand off the wheel long enough to wave me to silence. “What’s up?” he asked. Whatever he heard made his eyes go wide. He abruptly pulled over to the curb and stopped, pressing the phone to his ear. “Say that again.” He listened intently and I leaned closer, trying to hear what she said, to no avail. “You’re absolutely sure? Was he alone? No, stay where you are, don’t approach him. Understood? Okay. We’ll be there in a minute. Good work, Cruz.” He hung up and chewed his lip pensively.

  “What was that all about, Dad?” I asked when it looked like he wasn’t going to say anything.

  “Cruz spotted your car behind the library,” he said tersely. “She says she saw someone who looked just like you sneaking in through the back door.”

  “What?” That didn’t make any sense at all and I said so out loud. “There’s nothing left in the library. We brought all of Dr. Bellowes’ stuff to Mrs. Kendricks’ house.”

  “Maybe he’s using it as a hiding place,” Melissa suggested. “We’d never think to look for him there.”

  “Because it’s a terrible hiding place,” I argued. “There’s no food or water or electricity there.”

  “Yet something has drawn him forth,” Daraxandriel pointed out. “Mayhap he seeks some other artifact or journal Parathraxas brought with him.”

  “Mrs. Kendricks would have told us about it,” I insisted.

  “Would she?” Olivia countered. “She was under the control of the incubus when we were looking through his stuff, remember. Maybe she hid the rest of it somewhere else.”

  “What else could there possibly be? Olivia thinks maybe Mrs. Kendricks hid something else Dr. Bellowes brought with him,” I explained to everyone else.

  “Like his luggage?” Dad frowned. At my puzzled look, he added, “He flew in from London, didn’t he? He must have had a suitcase with him, even if he wasn’t planning on staying for very long. What happened to it?”

  Not once in the nearly two months since Dr. Bellowes arrived in Hellburn did it ever occur to me that he must have brought along a change of clothes and a toothbrush. “Even if that’s true,” I argued, just to be contrarian, “why would the incubus get it himself? Why wouldn’t he send Agent Morgan for it?”

  “Maybe it’s something he doesn’t want any of the witches to have,” Melissa guessed eagerly. “Maybe it’s something that breaks the curse and he’s afraid we’ll find it first.”

  “The touch of an incubus is not a curse, Melissa,” Daraxandriel objected. “A curse inflicts the will of one upon another, yet seduction is to an incubus as temptation is to a succubus. It is inherent to its being.”

  Melissa screwed up her face in confusion. “But that’s what’s happening, isn’t it? The witches are doing what the incubus wants.”

  “Nay, the twain are as night and day,” Daraxandriel insisted. “Dame Kendricks desires to do the bidding of the incubus, yet my Dread Lord’s curse afflicts Peter Simon Collins without his leave. Dost thou not perceive the difference?”

  “Let’s save the lecture for some other time,” Dad interjected. “We have a more pressing matter to deal with.” We all looked at him with varying degrees of puzzlement. “The incubus is two blocks away. What are we going to do about him?”

  “We have to get him!” I declared, sitting up straighter. “This might be our only chance to catch him alone. Let’s go!” I pointed down the road urgently but Dad held up a cautionary hand.

  “Do we have the right people to capture him?” he asked. “We can’t just go barging in unprepared. Someone might get hurt.”

  “Well –” I surveyed the occupants of the Jeep doubtfully. “I don’t suppose any of you knows how to exorcize an incubus.” Five heads shook in unison. “Maybe one of the witches at the station knows?” I suggested hopefully.

  “We don’t have a lot of time here, Peter,” Dad reminded me. “We don’t know how long it’ll take the incubus to finish whatever he’s doing.”

  “Damn it,” I muttered to myself. He was right, of course. We had to work with what we had. “Okay, here’s the plan. Melissa will blast him with something to force him out of my body and Dara will keep the incubus from leaving after it enters the new host. The Philosopher’s Stone will heal me after I’m back in my own body and I should be able to call Mrs. Kendricks and free her. Then she can come down here and exorcize the incubus and then everyone else will go back to normal. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Melissa said slowly, “except –”

  “What?”

  “What new host are you talking about? You don’t mean Amy, do you?” Amy greeted that suggestion with another rude noise.

  “He means me,” Dad explained somberly. “I’m the only other male here.”

  “Yeah,” I said quietly, feeling another knot form in my stomach. “Sorry, Dad. It won’t be for long, I promise.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It comes with the territory.”

  I didn’t point out that demonic possession wasn’t part of a typical policeman’s job description. Instead, I watched his profile as he pulled back out onto Milton and continued north, wondering if he was really as calm as he looked. I certainly wasn’t.

  Courage isn’t a lack of fear, I reminded myself. It’s doing what needs to be done even when you’re afraid. Dad had courage in spades. I hoped I’d be able to tell him how proud I was of him after all this was over.

  The library came into view ahead and I peered through the windshield looking for any hint of where the incubus might be. The sun glaring off the windows made it look like all the lights were on inside but it was otherwise unchanged from all the other times I’d been here today. I should probably just move into one of the spare rooms in there, I grumbled to myself. It would save a lot of running around.

  There was only one other car in the parking lot, a black Dodge Charger. Dad pulled into the slot beside it and turned off the engine.

  “Is that Cruz’s?” I asked. There was no one else in sight. Even the crew working on the alley was gone, leaving behind the backhoe, the barricades, and a large rectangular hole in the pavement.

  “Yes.” Dad drummed his fingers on the steering wheel for a moment and then get ou
t. All of us followed suit, except for Amy.

  “I’ll just wait here,” she declared, slumping down in her seat and propping her feet on the dashboard. “Let me know how it turns out.” She made a show of opening Dr. Bellowes’ journal.

  “That’s fine,” Dad told her. “Keep the doors locked, just in case.” She reached over and pressed the button on the door handle, locking us out. I hoped Dad remembered to take the key with him, otherwise we might end up walking home.

  Dad surveyed the area with a frown, paying close attention to the library’s main entrance at the top of the steps. All of the doors appeared to be firmly closed.

  “Where’s Cruz?” I asked him. Something about the situation made me drop my voice to a whisper.

  “She said your car was around back,” he said, equally quiet. “Let’s check there. Stay alert,” he warned everyone, leading the way. Melissa and Daraxandriel followed him a pace behind, flanking him like magical assassin tennis pros. Melissa’s hands flickered with black fire while Daraxandriel wielded the curved sword she pulled out of a slain demon in the borderlands of Hell. The incubus didn’t stand a chance.

  Except – “Dad!” I called urgently. He glanced back at me and the two women tensed up, searching for the threat. “Your gun!” He looked down at it with a frown. The flap was undone and his hands rested on its grip. “You shouldn’t be wearing that when the incubus possesses you. He might decide to use it.”

  He looked startled and then nodded. “Good catch.” He pulled the pistol from the holster, checked the safety, and then held it out to me grip-first. “Lock it in the Jeep.”

  I took it gingerly. I had exactly one lesson in firearm handling from Sergeant Finney, the main takeaway being Don’t screw up or someone will get hurt. I gestured for Amy to open the door but she just rolled down the window instead, holding out her hand with an eager grin.

  “I don’t think so,” I told her. “Unlock the doors.”

  She blew me another raspberry but complied and I lifted the back hatch, carefully tucking the pistol into the storage bin on the side. Amy could still get at it, of course, but she’d have to climb over two rows of seats to do it and I doubted she had enough motivation to expend the effort. I closed the hatch and Amy immediately locked the doors again before I could ask her to.