“It doesn’t look special,” she said, scrutinizing its every inch.
“You’re just going to need to trust me that it is,” Nana said.
“So if I go through this door, I’ll get to my daddy and friends.”
“Yes,” Nana told her. “They need your help very badly.”
“My help?”
“Your gift.”
Cassie got very serious and a little bit sad. “You mean the fire?”
Nana nodded.
“I don’t like to let that out,” she said, on the verge of tears.
“What you can do is very special, child,” Nana told her. “A special gift . . . a special gift from God.”
“Really?” she asked.
“Really,” Nana told her. “Are you ready? Are you ready to find your father and friends and use the special gift to help them . . . and the world?”
“The world?” she questioned.
Nana nodded.
“Now do you see how important you are?”
Cassie nodded, too, as the ghost of Nana placed a spectral hand upon the diamond-shaped doorknob, and the door, which was merely leaning up against the stone wall, swung gradually open to reveal a corridor of heavy mist.
“Is this it?” Cassie asked cautiously.
“It is,” Nana said. “Step inside and proceed forward,” the ghost explained. “They will be there at the end of your journey.”
Cassie stepped toward the opening and paused.
“Are you sure about the fire?” she asked the ghost. “That God gave it to me?”
Nana smiled, placing a cold hand upon her back and pushing her through the doorway.
“I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
• • •
It took a moment for Griffin to process and take it all in.
There was a demon across the way standing beside what looked to be a young woman whose body had been opened up to reveal some sort of passage inside her.
There were dead Coalition soldiers on the ground, Elijah was gravely injured, kneeling in a puddle of his own blood, and Theo was attacking her husband.
Yeah, he hadn’t a fucking clue, but he had to do something.
He started toward John, who was struggling with his wife, reaching for the gun with the special bullets stuffed into his waistband, when something emerged from the shadows beside him.
A skinless monstrosity wearing what looked to be a cloak made of patches of flesh was suddenly there before him.
He drew his weapon, but the skinless being was fast, grabbing hold of his wrist in a bone-breaking grip. The pain was incredible, and he thought for sure that his wrist was about to snap, but then he realized that something else was happening.
He was feeling weaker—drained.
Brenna was there, firing her weapon into the skinless creature.
The thing grunted as the bullets hit its cloak of skin, a hand reaching out from beneath the flesh to viciously slap her away.
Nicole was there as well and looked as though she might be trying to do something, to maybe call upon some ghosts to help save the day, but she wasn’t fast enough.
Skinless reached out to her, grabbing her face in his hand and thrusting her backward. Nicole flew through the air, passing through the doorway and out into the hallway.
Griffin tried to fight back, but he was now as weak as a newborn kitten, his struggles barely generating a reaction from the monster that still held him.
“Where were we?” the creature then asked with the most horrific of grins.
28
Theo’s body changed with nauseating pops and the grinding of bone as she attacked John.
He was doing everything he could to avoid dying and not to hurt the woman he loved.
Which he knew would be his downfall.
Magickal spells that he’d learned throughout his long career flowed from his mouth, buying him precious time.
“Theo, if you’re there, I want you to listen,” John said to her as he leapt back, the elongated claws at the end of boney fingers raking across the front of his shirt, tearing away clothing as well as the first layer of flesh.
John gasped as the wounds burned, and he felt the warm trickles of blood dribbling down his stomach.
She wasn’t reacting to his words, her eyes dull and lifeless—like those of a doll.
The spell he used next was one that he’d picked up from a magick user deep in a South American rain forest. It had primarily been used to repel hungry jungle animals with minimal harm. The words left his mouth in a singsongy jumble as he extended a hand, channeling the power through the tips of his fingers. He felt a sharp pain just as the power was released, his entire hand going numb as the magick left him.
She had been coming at him low, slithering across the ground like a shark gliding through shallow water.
The magick hit her square, flipping her up, then down to the ground in a loose-limbed heap.
John hoped—and prayed—that he hadn’t hurt her too badly as he moved closer to check.
She’d been playing possum, clawed hands reaching out to take hold of his ankle, pulling his leg out from beneath him, sending him to the floor. His head jerked back, slamming hard against the wooden floor, and he saw the universe spin before his eyes, stars and darkness forever in an eternal dance over who would reign supreme, the bright over the dark.
Right then he believed the dark was winning as he found himself struggling to remain conscious.
There was suddenly an incredible weight upon his chest, and he used this new sensation as something to grab hold of, something to drag himself back.
And as his eyes focused, he found himself looking up into the face of the woman he loved with all his heart and every fiber of his body.
The woman who existed in his every cell, giving him the will to go on when it looked as though all was dark.
She was his sun.
And now it looked as though she would kill him.
Theo—he hated to think of her that way, it wasn’t Theo at all, but the things inside her that had taken control—was perched upon his chest, her knees pressed into his shoulders, pinning him to the ground.
“Theo,” he managed, trying to reach his love. He knew she was in there and willed what little strength that remained in him to her.
Looking up into her eyes, he searched for her again but still saw only darkness as she leaned forward. Her beautiful mouth, which he had kissed so often, and that he longed to kiss again, split open vertically, the flesh pulling back to reveal multiple rows of razor-sharp teeth and a tongue like an eyeless serpent, shooting out from her now-cavernous maw toward his face.
• • •
“We’re going to kill him, and it will be worse than if you were killed yourself,” Billy Sharp said, looking out through her eyes at the murderous act that was about to be committed.
“And you’ll take great pleasure from that I’m sure,” Theo said, watching the horrors befalling the love of her life in slow motion. “But it won’t change the fact that you and yours have been betrayed, taken from your hellish homeworld without permission—used. You’re nothing more than tiny cogs in a great big machine that you know nothing about.”
She could feel Billy staring.
“You’re pawns,” she said. “Insignificant game pieces moved about with little concern. Do you even know what’s happening back home? Do you know what’s happening in Hell?”
She knew they had seen what she had seen from inside the mind of the angel imposter, and from the expression on Billy Sharp’s face, he understood about as much as she did.
Theo stared back at the demon child.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Murder the man I love and lose any chance that you might have of learning what’s truly happening.”
“You know so
mething,” the demon child said, his gaze attempting to penetrate her thoughts.
“I don’t . . . but I could,” she said. “Let my husband live, and I’ll do everything in my power . . . we’ll do everything in our power to send you all back.”
They glared at each other.
“Revenge,” she said with a snarl. “Isn’t that what you’re hungry for?”
“You expect me to trust you?”
Theo shrugged. “I could ask you the same.”
Billy looked back through her eyes.
“It would be so nice to kill him.”
“Then it’s completely up to you,” Theo said, resigned to the fact that she had tried everything she could in dealing with the demon.
The demon tongue that had appeared in her mouth was shooting down toward John’s face, and she watched it get closer, and closer still.
Theo was about to close her eyes, for she could not bear to see her husband hurt, when Billy Sharp suddenly spoke.
“Remember what we gave you here,” the demon child said, as the tongue split open at the tip, venomous spines dripping as they were about to attach to her husband’s face.
“And remember what you promised us.”
• • •
John saw the tongue as it lanced from her mouth.
He tried to move his head, but he knew that it wouldn’t be enough, that the demonic sensory organ would connect with his face, and it would likely be over for him.
He didn’t like the idea of giving up, of not having some plan, no matter how crazy, to fall back on. The idea of not trying something was completely foreign to him, but as he watched the tongue draw closer, he came to the startling realization that this could very well be it.
Closing his eyes, he prepared himself for what was to follow, calling out to every higher power that might be able to hear his pleas, pledging to continue the fight against the forces of darkness if they would provide him with some opportunity, no matter how small, to escape his current situation.
Eyes still firmly closed, prayers flying out into the ether, he sensed the proximity of the demon tongue and braced himself for . . .
The lips were warm, and plump and full of sensuality as they seductively pressed to his.
John opened his eyes, looking up not into the gaze of one possessed but into the loving eyes of his wife.
“Theo,” he said. “You’re back.”
“Yeah,” she said, crawling from atop him, reaching down to pull him up to his feet.
“Now let’s see what we can do about saving the world.”
“Sounds like a plan,” John said, as they both turned their attention to the portal from Hell.
29
Nicole could still feel the Cardinal’s hand on her face.
It was like he was drinking away her life.
She was in the corridor, just outside the ballroom where the bad shit was all going down, trying to pull herself together enough to get back in there, but it just wasn’t happening.
The lids of her eyes felt as though they had rocks on top of them, and no matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t get them to open. Moving her legs, she managed to push off from the floor, sliding herself backward to press up against the corridor wall. She would support herself there and attempt to stand.
Tiny, ghostly kisses landed upon her face. Daisy was concerned.
“It’s okay, lovey,” she slurred to the cat, so weak that she sounded drunk. She remembered the withered corpses at the nursing home and reminded herself that she had gotten off easy with just being exhausted. “Give me a sec, and . . .”
She heard something off to her right, the sound of something sliding across the floor, and Nicole fought to open her eyes. Managing mere slits, she gasped to see a figure dragging himself down the floor toward her, leaving a bloody, winding trail in his wake behind him.
It took a moment for her to realize—to recognize—who it was.
Fritz.
He was crawling toward her, reaching out a blood-covered hand toward her foot.
“No,” she said, fighting to find her strength, to move it away.
“Awww, c’mon,” Fritz cooed. “Don’t be like that.”
Fritz’s grip closed around the tip of her sneaker, and she immediately felt it, what little energy she had remaining, starting to be drained away. Nicole tried to push herself away, to slide down the wall, but he held fast, no matter how she squirmed and kicked.
“No reason to struggle, Sweety,” he said in the creepiest of voices.
And it was then that Daisy remembered.
The ghost of her cat reacted to her panic, then to the one that hung on to her foot.
The ghostly cat slithered down from her neck toward the man. Nicole tried to give the cat what she needed, the means by which to have some sort of substance, but she was so very weak and wasn’t sure if it would be enough.
Through barely open eyes Nicole watched as the cat attacked, Fritz reacting as bloody scratches appeared on his cheeks and forehead.
“Aaarrh!” he screamed, releasing the toe of her sneaker to bat at his invisible attacker.
This was her chance, she thought, pushing out with her feet and sliding partially down the corridor wall. She needed to get up, she told herself. She needed to stand.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Fritz asked. He was doing what she wanted to do, rising shakily to his feet. The stomach of his shirt and the front of his pants were stained crimson, and she had to wonder what had happened to him.
“There will be none of that,” he warned.
She could see that he was stronger now, that what he had taken from her had given him the strength to continue his attack on her.
Not good, not good at all, she thought.
She managed to slide up the wall into a standing position but hadn’t gotten much farther than that.
Fritz was on her in a heartbeat, his hands gripping the sides of her arms. She could feel him beginning to feed again.
Daisy was trying her best, the tiny ghost cat swirling around the man’s face like a tiny swarm of bees, but Fritz didn’t really seem to notice, swatting at the area around him before returning his physical contact with her.
“That’s it,” he cooed, his voice dripping with menace. “Just relax, and it’ll be over before you know it.”
She didn’t know where she found the strength, but she used it, hauling off and punching the man square in the face.
His head moved to one side, a trail of bloody spit flying from his mouth, as she pulled away.
Nicole knew that she wouldn’t be able to get far, her entire body trembling with exhaustion, but she had to make the attempt.
A wall of ghosts were suddenly blocking her path.
She looked at them and felt their rage and their hunger for revenge.
Reaching out a hand, she let her fingers enter the cold of their being, sampling their mood and why they were there.
The images were powerful, vicious, and she saw whom they were angry with, and why.
Swaying on her feet, Nicole turned to face her attacker. Fritz was advancing upon her, a lecherous smile upon his face.
“Is that it?” he asked her. “Decided to give up?”
She shook her head very slowly.
“There are an awful lot of dead things that don’t like you much, Fritz,” she said to him.
She watched his expression change from one of superiority to one of confusion.
“How do you know my name?”
“Let’s just say dead things talk, and they tell me things,” she said, trying her best to be tough but sounding drunk instead.
“And what do they tell you?” Fritz asked with a smirk, his confidence on the rise again.
“That you hurt a lot of people in this house, that they’ve been
waiting for you to return.” She swayed, afraid that she might tip over. “And, oh yeah, they really don’t like you very much at all.”
As the words left her mouth the ghosts of Scopa House swarmed around her, taking what little she had left of her gift.
Giving them substance.
Giving them the ability to take their long-awaited revenge.
Giving them the ability to kill.
• • •
It was sort of funny, for even after all that he had experienced in his life, Fritz had never believed in ghosts.
But he believed now as they swarmed around him, giving him teasing glimpses of who they were, making him acknowledge that they had indeed lived before he had fed upon their life.
And just as he came to realize who they were, and that ghosts actually did exist, they began the process of extracting their vengeance.
Swirling around him like a cyclone made purely of purpose and rage, stealing away his breath, tearing away his skin.
Until he was nothing more than bones.
And a ghost himself.
• • •
The Cardinal was taking his life, draining it away as easily as if it were a soda being drunk with a straw.
Griffin tried to fight it, he really did, but the more contact the bloody man had with it, the weaker he became.
He felt his legs give out, his entire body slumping to the floor. The skinless monster held on tightly to him, allowing his body to sag just so much toward the floor.
Close enough that he could reach his gun.
He had no idea if it would work or not as he reached down as quickly as he was able, unsure of how much time he actually had, and scooped the pistol up off the floor.
Through bleary eyes he aimed, firing at least three shots into the bloody being’s side.
The Cardinal grunted, releasing its hold upon him and letting him fall to the floor. He actually felt himself getting better, stronger with the contact broken. Griffin tried to crawl away, to get somewhere safe where he could perhaps recover more before . . .
“Where do you think you’re going?” the Cardinal asked, gripping his ankle and dragging him back. “I haven’t finished with you.”
Dark Exodus Page 33
