She was getting awfully tired of Billy Sharp.
Even though it was happening entirely on the psychic plane, she was still exhausted, still injured—battered, bruised, clawed, and bitten—but nothing was going to stop her, nothing was going to keep her from that cave, where she knew that the answers to deadly questions awaited her.
“You never cease to amaze, my dear,” Billy had said. “We keep expecting you to fail, for your human stamina to diminish, but you just keep on coming, tearing us down, ripping us apart.”
He’d paused and smiled again.
It was the first time that she’d noticed that Billy still had all his baby teeth.
“Not that it matters,” he’d said. “Sure it hurts like hell, but we’re back to business as soon as we heal. Nothing stays dead on the psychic plane.”
Theo remembered that this exchange had angered her, and she’d wanted to kill them all, each and every one of the thousand—over and over again.
“The newbies,” she’d growled, stalking closer to Billy and the cave mouth. The child’s hands had morphed to terrible hooked claws. They could do some serious damage, she was certain of that, and would make it a point to avoid them.
“I want them . . . I want to know what makes them so special that you’d be willing to go through . . .” She turned to look at the torn and broken bodies of the demons that littered the ground, before looking back. “. . . this.”
Billy shrugged. “Nothing special,” he said. “It’s just nice to hear what’s going on back home.”
“Give them to me,” she’d demanded, stalking closer.
The demon child watched her, its hands growing long and sharp.
“Is that how it’s going to be, Billy?” she asked. She was exhausted but still able to fight to get what she wanted.
“You can’t keep this up forever, you know,” Billy said to her.
“You keep telling yourself that,” she said to him.
“One of these days, you’ll be too weak to stop us . . . to hold us back.”
“Maybe,” she said with a shrug. “And maybe not.”
Billy flexed his knifelike fingers.
“So what’s it gonna be, Billy Sharp?”
Theo thought he would fight, but the child backed down, stepping aside from the cave mouth.
“I’m patient,” the child said. “I can wait.”
Theo entered the cave, the sigils on her naked body dispelling the darkness. She found them all cowering together.
In this place, inside her psyche, they had form, dark-skinned things, reptilian in appearance.
They hissed at her as she and her light came closer.
“We can either do this the easy way,” she said, making her body burn all the brighter. “Or the hard way. It’s up to you.”
Surprisingly enough, they went the easy route. These newbies could show the other creeps a thing or two about cooperation.
“Something bad is happening in Hell,” she then told her husband, remembering what the newbies had said. “Something so bad that they were perfectly fine to be brought over to the earthly plane and contained in a vessel by Fritz.”
“Excuse me?” John said.
Theo nodded. “Oh yeah,” she said. “He’s responsible for the incident at the school as well . . . and the newbies were okay with all this because it got them away from what’s going on in the infernal realms.”
John got really serious.
“What’s happening there?” he asked.
Theo shook her head. “I’m not really sure I understood it,” she said. “But it had something to do with Hell ceasing to exist.”
The screams of John’s name came from the first floor.
“What now?” John said, dropping his broom and rushing toward the door, along with everybody else.
Nicole was in the entryway, looking as though she’d seen a ghost.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, already remembering the first of some magickal defenses that could be needed if . . .
“I just talked to your grandmother!” she screamed at him.
“Nana?” Theo said, saddling up alongside her husband on the stairs.
“Yeah, your Nana,” Nicole said, nodding her head up and down. “Your Nana the ghost.”
“Yeah, she’s that,” John said.
“Your grandmother is a ghost?” Griffin asked.
“Cool!” Cassie said. “Can I see her?”
John continued down the stairs, Theo following along with the others.
“Where did you see her?” John asked. “The fact that she appeared to you . . .”
“I don’t see people ghosts!” Nicole exclaimed, obviously upset. “But yeah, I saw her!”
“What did she want?” John asked. “Did she tell you anything?”
“Yeah, she did,” Nicole said. “She brought some woman with her . . . some other ghost . . . someone who died pretty horribly yesterday.”
Nicole paused, taking a breath. Theo could see that the young woman was scared.
Welcome to their world.
“She was drained of life . . . like somebody drinkin’ a juicebox,” she said.
“Like Fritz with your cat,” John said, as Nicole nodded. “Maybe there’s some kind of connection.”
“I think we should go there,” Theo said.
“Funny,” Nicole said with an uneasy laugh. “That’s exactly what Nana said we should do.”
• • •
Donna Nixon breathed a sigh of relief as she pulled onto Troughton Street. Only seconds away from home now. She had wanted to get to the grocery store before her two kids got dropped off by the bus from school and was afraid that she might be late.
She threw her blinker on as she was about to enter her driveway, noticing a man and his car by the side of the road, its hood up, the man leaning in, fiddling with something.
Driving up the driveway, she watched the man in the rearview mirror and felt bad for the guy.
Donna popped the trunk and climbed out of her car to get the groceries. As she moved around back of the car, she strayed, wandering farther down the drive toward the man and his broken-down vehicle.
He noticed her and waved.
“Everything all right?” she called to him.
He laughed, tugging on something under the hood. “Oh yeah, everything is great,” he said, coming out from beneath the metal cover. “Got called from work because my kid is sick, my car breaks down, and to make it even better, my phone dies.” He held up his cell phone and shook his head.
She shook her head in solidarity with him and was about to return to her car and the groceries when she made the decision . . .
“Do you want to come use my landline inside?” she asked, gesturing toward her house.
“Would you mind terribly?” he asked. “I would really appreciate it!”
She waved him up the drive. “Help me with the groceries, and you can use the phone all you like,” she said jokingly.
The man leaned into her trunk, getting the remainder of the bags. “Is this it?” he asked.
“It is!” she said cheerily, moving toward a side door. “My name’s Donna, by the way.”
“Hello, Donna,” the man said from behind her. “You can call me Fritz.”
• • •
The woman named Donna let them inside, telling him where the phone was just as she noticed the shape of the Cardinal sitting at her kitchen table.
She screamed out loud, dropping the bag of groceries to the floor with a clatter. Fritz suspected that she was going to make a run for it, so he came up behind her and jabbed the short-bladed knife into her spine.
“Urkk!” Donna said, dropping to her knees on the kitchen floor.
“Thank you, Fritz,” the Cardinal said, getting up from its chair.
&n
bsp; Fritz watched as the demon approached, mesmerized by the living cloak and hood of flesh that adorned the Cardinal’s body. It moved upon the demon’s skinless body, like something stroked by gentle ocean currents. It really was something to behold.
As the Cardinal came around to the woman, who was still upright on her knees, it began to open the various drawers, searching for something.
“You’re probably wondering if this is all a very bad dream,” the Cardinal said, peering into the drawers, not finding what it was looking for, before moving on to the next. “First, let me assure you—it is not. This is very, very real.”
It opened another drawer and looked inside.
“Ah,” the Cardinal said, a skinless hand diving into the drawer and emerging with a carving knife. The demon approached the woman, who started to slump to one side. Fritz came up from behind, allowing her to lean against him. He hoped that she wouldn’t get blood on his slacks.
“The next thing you’re probably wondering is, why?” the Cardinal said, striding closer to the injured woman. “And believe it or not, there is actually a very good reason.”
The Cardinal stood before the woman, holding the blade.
“When you were a young woman, you admired a friend of yours greatly,” the Cardinal told her. “Admired her to the point of obsessive jealousy.”
Fritz looked down at the woman and saw that she actually understood what the Cardinal was talking about.
“And when she acquired the boyfriend whom you believed should have belonged to you, something snapped inside of you.”
The Cardinal looked at her, dark eyes glistening wetly.
“That was when your fate was sealed,” the demon said with a growl. “That was when you decided to take the life of your friend. You made it look like an accident. The two of you swimming late at night. How long did you hold her under?” the Cardinal asked. “How long did it take for her to die?”
“Please,” Donna pleaded. “That was . . . that was a very long time ago.”
“It was,” the Cardinal said. “But with your act, you . . . and the thing that began to grow inside you . . . became the property of the infernal realms.”
“I don’t . . . understand,” Donna struggled to speak. Fritz now held her up by the collar of her shirt.
“Of course you don’t,” the demon said. “You never would have perpetrated the necessary act if you did. The murder was the invitation, which Hell gladly accepted.”
“Invitation,” Donna said drunkenly. She just didn’t understand.
“You gave us all the permission we would need,” the Cardinal said, moving closer to the woman. The map of flesh that adorned its body came to life, flashes of light within the skin radiating downward toward the demon’s hands.
“Please,” she said. “I’m so sorry . . . so very . . .”
“Of course you are,” the Cardinal said as it plunged the blade deep inside her, beneath the rib cage. “The guilty are always sorry when faced with the inevitable.”
The Cardinal twisted the blade, making the woman thrash wildly in death. Fritz was unable to hold on to her and she fell to the ground, her body wracked with spasms.
The Cardinal glared.
“Sorry,” Fritz said. “Do you want me to lift her up again or . . .”
“No,” the demon said, dropping to its knees. It stuck its fingers inside the stab wound, forcing its hand deeper inside her still-warm corpse.
Fritz watched the demon lord as it continued to probe the insides of the corpse. The sounds of squeaking brakes from outside caused Fritz to glance toward the window over the sink, and he watched a school bus as it opened its doors at the end of the drive, and two older children, a boy and a girl, came walking up the driveway, chattering to one another, backpacks loaded with schoolbooks upon their backs.
“We’re about to have company,” Fritz said.
“Excellent,” the Cardinal said as it found what it was looking for, pulling its bloody fingers from the knife wound. The object was mercurial in its grasp, changing shape between the gore-covered finger and thumb.
The boy and girl came into the kitchen arguing, the boy hip-checking the girl into the doorframe as he was the first to enter.
The first to see his mother’s bloody corpse lying there.
The boy began to scream, barely noticing Fritz as the man came up behind him and wrapped one of his hands around the back of his neck and began to feed, taking just enough so that the boy lost consciousness.
The girl stood paralyzed in the doorway, spinning around awkwardly, her backpack throwing her off balance, and also giving Fritz something to grab hold of.
“There’ll be none of that,” Fritz said as he yanked her back into the kitchen, placing his hand on the side of her cheek.
Fritz found himself moaning just a little as her life force flooded his body. The deliciousness of youth was intoxicating.
He let her fall to the floor beside her brother, their mother’s body no more than a foot away.
One big happy family, Fritz thought as he decided which one of the children he would consume first.
14
The ring of her phone was like an enormous fishhook embedded inside her brain, dragging her kicking and fighting to the surface.
Brenna’s eyes came open, a flood of adrenaline already coursing through her body. It took a moment to put it all together, to remember where she was, what she had done.
Still debating on how smart it was.
She glanced over to see that Craig was still asleep.
“Shit,” Brenna muttered as she slunk out from beneath the covers, padding nude across the floor of the hotel bedroom to get to where she’d left her purse.
Her bag was beside the couch, where the action had begun, and she experienced a pleasant flush of heated memory in her lower regions as she recalled the activity that had taken place there.
She grabbed her bag, rummaging furiously through the wreckage within and found her phone.
It was John Fogg. That was never good.
“Isabel,” she said, answering the call.
“Got a situation we need to check out,” John said, skipping the small talk.
“All right, shoot,” she said.
“Nursing home in Ohio, all patients and staff murdered. Supposedly drained of their life forces.”
“Life forces? What do you . . .”
“Sucked dry, like a drained battery.”
“Everyone?” she asked.
“Everyone,” John answered. “We want to go there, check out the scene, check out the bodies.”
“Okay.”
“Think you could arrange that?”
Craig stood naked in the doorway, and she found herself staring.
“Hello?” John asked.
“Yeah,” Brenna answered him, trying to recall the entirety of the question. “Sure, I’ll make the call now, arrange transport.”
“Good,” John said. “You’ll meet us there?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m getting ready now.”
“Everything all right?” John asked her.
Craig came toward her, and she felt the warmth of arousal flood through her once again. He went to the kitchen, grabbed a glass, and filled it with water from the sink.
“Everything’s fine,” she told John. “See you there.”
• • •
“You okay?” Craig asked, as she ended the call.
“Fine,” she said, looking at her phone. She made the call to the Coalition and put the wheels in motion. She needed to get to the airport as quickly as she was able, where she knew that a private charter would already be waiting to take her to Ohio.
She turned to retrieve her clothes, Craig—still very much naked—following behind her.
“I’ve got to get out of here fast,” she
told him.
“Is it all work?” he asked her.
She stopped to look at him.
“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, it is.”
“Good.” A hint of a smile played at the corners of his mouth. “I was hoping there wouldn’t be regrets.”
“Maybe a few,” she admitted, pulling up her slacks and buttoning them.
“At least it’s only a few,” he said. He sat down upon the bed, and she was having a hard time not looking at him. He’d kept himself in pretty good shape, which was nice to see.
She stood before the mirror and ran her fingers through her short hair.
“This is as good as it’s going to get, I’m afraid,” she said to her reflection, hand then reaching to the side holster, which held her gun. “I’ve got to fly.”
She was going toward the doorway when she stopped. She turned and walked toward where he was sitting.
“This was nice,” she said, bending down to give him a quick kiss. “I’ll give you a call once I’m back.”
“You do that,” he said.
She was again on her way to the door when he called to her.
“Yeah?”
“Since I’ve seen you,” Craig said. “I’ve been having this recurring dream.”
She waited, feeling her pulse begin to race.
“It’s about Ronan,” he said. “And in the dream he’s very much alive.” He paused, looking down at his hands. “Is that crazy?” he asked, looking up to meet her eyes.
“Not at all,” she said, feeling a bond savagely severed years ago beginning to mend.
“We’ll talk about it more when I get back,” she told him as she left the bedroom, grabbing her purse from beside the couch and going out the door.
• • •
Reuben Damaris slowed down in his white Ford pickup as he approached the three figures—one adult and two boys—practically walking in the middle of the road.
“What the hell is up with these characters?” the old man muttered to himself, giving the horn a few taps to let them know he was there.
They didn’t even bother to turn, continuing on their journey down the center of the winding road. The way they walked reminded him of somebody sleepwalking, like in the movies or on TV. He pulled up beside them.
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