Ryan shook his head and tried to focus on his current surrounding, in the Durango. He couldn’t change what had happened in Hawthorne’s, but he could keep the promise to himself. He had to stay alert for any opportunity to fight back.
“We need a gathering?” Dalton asked. “Lots of people in a confined space?”
“Yes,” the oni said. “Do you have something in mind?”
“Damn straight,” Dalton said, grinning. “The Cheshire Theater.”
Jesse laughed for some reason. “I know it well.”
Ryan looked back and forth between them and tried not to stare at the oni, worried that his hatred for the monster would be visible in his eyes.
The oni opened the duffel bag at his feet and handed them each a long curved knife. “Keep these concealed until we are inside,” he said. “Then kill as many as you can. But remember to save at least one for your fangs or claws.”
“Almost there,” Jesse said.
Ryan took his knife and stared at the gleaming blade. He imagined plunging the blade into somebody and trembled with excitement. He squeezed his eyes shut.
Don’t become the monster. Don’t … become the monster …
Trailing the red Durango, Sumiko slowed when Jesse parked the SUV on the right side of the street. When all four of them got out of the Durango and walked down the sidewalk, she had to make a decision. Ryan would never hurt her, but that left three extremely large males with violent backgrounds, while she was one slender teenaged girl who was too nosy for her own good. She stayed in the Odyssey and drove past them, raising her right hand and forearm in front of her face in case they looked as she passed.
As she crossed the intersection, she glanced in the rearview mirror and was surprised when they walked into the Cheshire Theater. According to the marquee, Fiddler on the Roof was the featured play, two shows daily.
Oh, Ryan, no! She made an illegal U-turn and drove back to the theater, parking on the opposite side of the street.
Please tell me you’re not helping them rob the place.
She darted across four lanes of traffic, eliciting a strained chorus of car horns.
When her hand fell on the handle of one of the ornate wooden doors of the theater, she paused, uncertain of her next course of action. She could talk Ryan out of criminal stupidity, but not those other three goons. Maybe she could drag Ryan out and to hell with—
Screams erupted from inside.
Sumiko jumped back from the doors as if she’d been shocked.
Too late. God, I’m too late …
Continuing to back away, she patted her hip pockets, remembered she had left her phone on the passenger seat of the Odyssey, and ran back across four lanes of traffic as the light turned yellow. A driver intent on running the yellow light had to stomp on his brakes to avoid hitting her. The car screeched, its bumper striking her leg, almost knocking her down. Laying on his horn, the driver spewed curses out of his window in between questioning her mental capacity. She barely heard him as she jumped in the Odyssey and dialed 911.
The cell reception was horrible. Static overwhelmed the operator’s voice, swallowing whole words. Sumiko shouted, “Robbery at the Cheshire Theater! Hurry!”
She rocked back and forth in the driver’s seat, hands gripping her phone tucked between her knees, muttering, “Ryan, what have you done? What have you done?”
After Roy showed them to his American holly shrub, Bobby and Dean took two pairs of pruning shears and collected two dozen sets of leaves with red berries. Bobby planned to have McClary pass the extras out to the patrol officers assigned to him. Protection against supernatural accidents, clumsiness and mechanical malfunctions would level the playing field a bit and, they hoped, reduce casualties the next time they encountered the oni. But the holly wouldn’t defeat him.
Sam stayed inside the cabin, re-examining the lore, looking for something he might have missed or something that allowed for a reinterpretation of the lore. While online, he noticed a couple of new items on the RSS feed for the Lion Truth blog. The first related some information about the stadium collapse and gave the names of some of the victims—no information Sam didn’t know or hadn’t experienced firsthand. The newest item caught his attention because it seemed out of place. Three faces, all young men, side by side, almost like mug shots. He skimmed the entry. All three had been born within the same week, seventeen years ago, to three different women who all died in childbirth.
A bizarre coincidence, Sam thought. Unless it wasn’t.
Sam reviewed the facts: Half-brothers; different mothers, one father. All conceived approximately eighteen years ago.
“Eighteen years …” Sam tapped a pen on the table and recalled what Kim Jacobs had told them about the oni’s plans. “No choice but to come to him, the father … They must shed their human face.”
“Dean! Bobby!” Sam shouted.
He met them as they came through the back door with Roy and a couple of bags filled with holly.
“He came back for his family,” Sam told them.
“Wait. What?” Dean said, frowning. “There’s an oni family in town?”
Sam explained his theory that when the oni visited Laurel Hill eighteen years ago he impregnated three separate women.
“The teens are hybrids. They must come of age in their seventeenth year. He’s back to collect them or to guide them through a transformation.”
“So it really was an oni all those years ago,” Roy said. “I’ll be damned.”
“What about the woman he kidnapped?” Dean said. “Is she meant to become his mate?”
“The demon gate ceremony must change the woman,” Sam said. “It looks like human women don’t survive the birthing process.”
“Great,” Dean said. “An oni who’s ready to settle down.”
“And oni family values involve slaughtering humans by the truckload,” Bobby said grimly.
His cell rang.
“McClary,” he told them, then answered.
“Yup. Sore as hell. How’s the wrist?” He listened for a few moments. “Aw, hell… No, it’s gotta be him. No, no magic bullet yet. Just holly… And send some K-9 units. I’ll explain later.”
“Where?” Dean asked.
“Cheshire Theater,” Bobby said. “Sounds bad.”
“That’s ten minutes from here,” Roy said. “Five if we ignore red lights.”
“Roy,” Bobby said, “this ain’t your fight.”
“Hell it ain’t,” Roy said, grabbing his keys. “Should have killed the bastard eighteen years ago.”
Ryan was losing the battle against his inner demon.
The oni had led them into the lobby of the Cheshire Theater. Wielding his cane like a deadly combination of a sword and club, he struck down the startled theater workers loitering in the open area.
“Once inside,” he told his sons, “block the exits. Allow no one to leave.”
“I’m all over the balcony,” Dalton said with demented glee.
Doors on either side of the lobby led into the theater, so Tora instructed Jesse and Dalton to enter through the right before grabbing Ryan’s arm and pulling him through the left. He must have sensed Ryan’s hesitation because he pressed his face close to Ryan’s, baring his sharp teeth, and said, “By my blood, I command you. Allow no one to leave by the fire exit.”
The mention of the oni’s blood and the memory of it on his lips and tongue had galvanized Ryan, as if the phrase had triggered a post-hypnotic suggestion. When the others fanned out, he rushed down the left aisle and took a position blocking the fire exit.
With the lights down in the theater, the audience of several hundred hardly noticed their arrival and deployment. Most of the actors were on stage for the big wedding celebration near the end of the first act.
The screaming had begun when Jesse jumped on stage with his knife and started slicing throats, one after another. A few people tried to stop him, without success. By that time, the audience had risen en masse from their se
ats to rush for the exits, where the oni awaited them with his deadly cane in one hand and a meat cleaver in the other. When they tried to reach the other door to the lobby, dead bodies rained down from the balcony, courtesy of Dalton, striking the backs of seats or the burgundy carpeting.
After slaughtering the orchestra, Jesse waded through the crowd, slashing left and right with deadly abandon until he blocked the door opposite the oni.
Until then, Ryan had stood in mute shock by the fire exit, his own hands unsullied. But he felt the fire burning inside him so fiercely that he feared what would happen the moment someone approached him. His need to lash out at something, someone, was being held in check by the thinnest of threads.
“The fire exit!” a burly man in a dark, blood-spattered three-piece suit yelled, leading a dozen people down the left aisle toward Ryan.
The men wore suits and ties and the women wore fancy evening gowns, formal attire now at odds with the slaughterhouse the theater had become.
“Out of the way, boy!” the man shouted at Ryan.
“Stand your ground!”
The voice was like a drumbeat inside his head.
Ryan braced himself.
“I—can’t,” Ryan said. A part of him, human-Ryan, wanted to run as far away from the theater as possible. But another part of him, a dark urge rising to the surface of his consciousness, wanted to fight… and to kill.
“Move!” the man shouted, and charged—
Right into the tip of the sharp blade that Ryan had raised reflexively.
As the heavy man crashed into him, Ryan felt the knife sink into the man’s flesh, almost too easily. Warm blood gushed over Ryan’s fist. He pushed and the man fell back and collapsed.
“You bastard!” a woman in an emerald dress screamed and rushed Ryan, her hands lashing out, trying to rake his face with her fingernails.
In self-defense, he caught her with his free hand around her throat and, before he could stop himself, he squeezed. His dark fingernails sliced through her neck as easily as his knife had pierced her husband’s chest. Blood sprayed from an artery, washing over Ryan’s face. He knew in that moment he was lost.
His head burned as his horns nudged through his scalp and, when he grimaced in pain, his sharper teeth sliced his bottom lip. In the middle of his forehead, a dull ache began to throb and recede. Human-Ryan, if any part of him still existed, succumbed to despair. The stronger darkness surged up through him and lashed out at anyone who approached him.
The next several minutes were a blur, with brief flashes of the carnage resolving into horrifying clarity before sinking into the fog of brutality. Jesse ripped out several throats with his claws and a few more with his teeth. Dalton’s victims continued to fall from the balcony. At some point, a theater worker started to turn the house lights up, before Jesse found him. Now the theater had a twilight cast to it, as if light could never overcome the darkness.
People were too cowed to approach the exits. Screaming had turned to sobbing, with many of the wounded moaning and writhing on the floor or sprawled across seats. Some tried to call for help on their cell phones, but found none of their phones would complete a call.
The oni impaled anyone within arm’s reach with his cane or lopped off heads and arms with powerful swipes of the blood-drenched cleaver.
Over a hundred people were dead or dying before the first contingent of police officers arrived. The first few stood in uncomprehending shock, but soon had to recover to fight for their lives. They fired guns at the oni, some point blank, but could not injure him.
A shot hit Jesse. He yelped, staggered backward a couple of steps, and looked down at his chest. He laughed. The bullet had ripped through his hoodie and shirt over his heart, but he seemed more startled than hurt. He rushed the cop and stabbed him in the gut, ripping the blade upward, killing him.
Ryan remembered what the oni had said about his blood conferring some of his invulnerability to his sons, at least for several hours. He jerked as a bullet struck his own upper arm. He inspected the point of impact and saw a red welt, nothing more. The bullet hadn’t penetrated his skin either. More bullets followed. Most hurt about as much as a wasp sting.
The oni stalked the police officers who had fired on them, cutting them down one by one. Others inadvertently killed each other with crossfire or deadly ricochets. Guns jammed. They tripped or slipped in blood and fell. One knocked himself out when he fell against the back of a theater seat. Some tried calling for backup, but their radios crackled with static and squeals.
Ryan understood that the oni was responsible for the accidents, the clumsiness of the cops, the malfunctioning cell phones and police radios. Human-Ryan, voiceless and dwindling into irrelevance, knew that the people were doomed. No one in the theater would survive the massacre.
Thirty-One
Dean had kept the Monte Carlo’s windows rolled down since leaving the bowling alley to try and rid the vehicle of burnt car seat smell. So far, it hadn’t helped.
Dean and Sam heard the police sirens long before they arrived at the blocked intersection with an ambulance and at least seven police cruisers parked at odd angles in the middle of the street, their flashing lightbars painting everything within sight blue and red. One cop had been left outside to reroute traffic and order pedestrian gawkers to vacate the area.
From the opposite direction, two black and white police SUVs with the K-9 designation on their side panels arrived, weaving through the police cars to approach the theater entrance.
“I guess we hoof it from here,” Dean said to Sam, who was riding shotgun, looking anxious.
Dean swung the Monte Carlo to the curb before the police blockade. Bobby and Roy followed in Bobby’s Chevelle, which he slipped into the closest parking space behind the Monte Carlo. The four of them jogged toward the theater. Bobby took the lead, moving like a shopping cart with a bad wheel, on the lookout for McClary, who could clear them with the traffic cop. They each carried holly leaves and berries in a trouser pocket. Bobby held the extras in a paper bag for McClary to distribute to his officers.
As they crossed the intersection, Sam stared across the street, apparently distracted.
“Sam!”
“What?”
“Lucifer-vision?” Dean asked softly.
If the holly worked, the oni’s mojo couldn’t trip up Sam with an ill-timed Lucifer visit. Of course, Dean knew Sam’s mind might wig out all on its own.
“No,” Sam said. “A young Asian woman peeking out of that minivan. Our blogger, maybe?”
“Could be,” Dean said. “She’s definitely got her finger on the pulse of the weird.”
McClary had ridden to the theater in one of the K-9 vehicles. He approached them, a fresh cast on his right forearm, as the drivers of the two units opened the rear doors and led out two German shepherds on leashes.
As Bobby’s group reached the sidewalk, the traffic cop yelled, “You can’t go in there!”
“Stand down, Becker!” McClary called. “They’re with me.”
McClary lowered his voice and said to Bobby, “It’s worse than we thought. It’s a bloodbath in there. Details are sketchy. Radio reception keeps dropping out. But that—The oni—he’s not alone.”
“Right,” Dean said. “Dad’s got Mike, Robbie and Chip with him now.”
“What am I missing?” McClary asked, confused.
“The oni came back to claim his three sons,” Sam said. “Half-breeds.”
They hurried into the lobby. The two K-9 officers waited with the dogs, one at either door. Six other officers split up with them, three to a side, guns drawn, looking nervous. One fresh-faced cop gripped a shotgun, which caught McClary’s eye.
“Winemiller, you can’t fire a shotgun in there!”
“Right, sir,” the junior patrol officer said, and turned toward the outer door.
“Winemiller! Go round back. Tell Louden we go in sixty seconds.”
“Wait.” Bobby held a sprig of holly out to the juni
or officer. “Put this in your pocket.
“That’s an order,” he added, when Winemiller gave him a disbelieving look.
McClary nodded his confirmation, then turned to Bobby as Winemiller jogged away. “I’m supposed to be on desk duty, but I can’t sit this one out, no matter what the chief says.”
“Where is the chief?” Bobby asked.
“Calling in a SWAT team from the FBI’s Philly field office and pressing the mayor to have the governor call in the National Guard,” McClary said. “I expect he’ll be here soon. We’re calling everyone. All hands on deck.” He handed Bobby a gun. “Loaded with armor-piercing rounds. So’s mine, but I’ll only risk point blank range with my left hand. These will go through soft targets, so watch your aim. Ricochets are a bitch.”
Bobby nodded and then reached into the bag for the holly. “Have your men carry these. Could stop the bad luck hoodoo. Maybe improve radio reception.”
“Got any rabbit’s feet in there? Four leaf clovers? Horseshoes?”
“Can’t hurt,” Dean said. “We’re packing.”
“If nothing else,” Sam added, “it might give us time to find a weakness.”
“Maybe the weakness,” McClary suggested, “is his three sons.”
As the sergeant quickly passed out the holly, brooking no complaints, Dean looked at Sam, who nodded and said, “He’s got a point.”
“Roy, you’re with me,” Dean said, moving to the right door. “Agent Willis, go with S—Tom.”
The Winchesters had discussed their deployment in the car. Bobby continued to walk with a limp, grimacing with each step. Roy had one arm and had retired from hunting with good reason. Both men were too stubborn to sit out the battle, but too much of a liability to each other to team up.
McClary checked his watch. “Go!”
The K-9 units went through the doors first, followed by the other officers and McClary, with the Winchesters, Bobby and Roy bringing up the rear.
* * *
Sumiko had stayed hidden below the window of her mother’s Odyssey when the police cars arrived and blocked the intersection. She kept hoping and praying that Ryan would come out of the theater unharmed. But nobody who went inside the theater came out and she feared a robbery had turned into a hostage situation. She heard occasional gunshots and screaming when the outer doors opened and tried not to let her imagination run wild.
Rite of Passage Page 26
