When Darkness Falls

by Susan Krinard, Tanith Lee, Evelyn Vaughn

  "Where?" she demanded. "Tell me how to get them back."

  Tomas let go of Ricky's left shoulder to span his throat with one hand. "And tell her the price."

  He'd never killed anyone before, though he'd come close in a few fights. His own certainty that he could do it now both unnerved and satisfied him.

  "Through that door," said Ricky.

  Tomas looked quickly from Ricky to Marcy, back and forth. One magic user unfazed at costing people their lives, another who could barely dram up the willpower to do a harmless spell for her own benefit. He knew who he'd bet on in a contest. "Marcy—"

  "I know what a door means." But damned if she wasn't walking slowly toward it. "It's still not Snowball's fault, or Father Gregory's, that this happened to them."

  "It's not your fault either, querida."

  "Maybe not, but they didn't even have a choice." She stood in front of the narrow door. "At least I have a choice. That's worth something, isn't it? And I choose to risk this."

  Ricky tried to take advantage of Tomas's distraction to wriggle loose, so Tomas turned back to him—and squeezed. "If anything happens to her, you won't live long enough to get anything you want."

  "I will if I get my wish before I'm dead." Ricky was wheezing as his air got cut off, but still he managed to slant his gaze toward the book open on the altar, past Tomas's elbow, and to cry out a hoarse "Elate se me!"

  Tomas stared at him. "What?"

  Marcy reached out with one hand and opened the door, loosing a blast of searing heat.

  * * *

  Part 5

  « ^

  It may have been the most stupid thing she'd ever done. Marcy knew that. She wasn't just risking her own life but the priest's, and her cat's.

  And Tomas's. Oh, God. Tomas's.

  But it was also her bravest moment.

  Heat hit her like a shock wave, blasting across the room. Behind the door and yet not, amidst the roiling chaos of some kind of parallel Hell dimension, reared the demon. The one who'd trapped Marcy in the elevator. Who'd licked its flames up and down her body. Who'd forced defeating thoughts into her mind, against her will.

  But here it didn't stay behind the door.

  Smoking and malformed, it shambled into the room—and bravest moment or not, she took three quick steps back. The creature swelled, larger and larger until the flickering horns of flame on its head seared the ceiling and the orange, black and scarlet breadth of its shoulders crowded the room's crown moldings. From behind it, lizardlike salamanders slithered through the portal and across the walls, their tails leaving sooty streaks behind them. A fluttering of skittery, batlike creatures whirled out and around the room like some crazed circus of evil.

  Behind her, Marcy heard Ricky call, "Here she—"

  But his words strangled into silence. Tomas.

  Turns out Sharona was right about his more violent abilities.

  Here in Ricky's strange temple, the creature seemed to finally find its voice. Its gravelly words boomed not only in Marcy's head, with splitting volume, but around her. It shook the glass in Ricky's display case and fluttered the banners on the panel wall. Thank you, it growled in Ricky's direction.

  Then it turned to loom up and over Marcy, an inferno of sadistic pleasure, of desire, of greed—

  And she swung at it with the baseball bat she'd taken from Ricky's display rack while nobody was looking.

  She put every bit of strength into the blow. Every bit of upset she'd felt since she opened her closet this morning. Every bit of anger at the unfairness. Every bit of fury that whatever she'd been discovering all day with Tomas Martinez might not have a chance to become something wonderful. It felt great. Freeing. Cathartic.

  Until the bat impacted the creature—and the shock of it ricocheted up Marcy's arms and shoulders. Pain!

  Behind her, she thought she heard Ricky saying something like "No, no, no." Maybe Tomas hadn't killed him after all.

  The demon creature made an odd, choking sound that Marcy realized was laughter. It arched even farther up and over her, staring down with flickering, red-on-black coal eyes, and the shadow where its mouth should be stretched wide.

  Cute, it boomed.

  It thought she was cute? As in, amusing?

  Damn condescending spawn of Hell! She swung again, and this time the impact almost dislocated her shoulder, but she swung again anyway, ready to go down fighting if she went down at all.

  The bat burst into flames in her hands, catching on its rounded end and quickly flaring up its length like a too-dry match.

  Marcy dropped it before the fire reached her hands, and the room around her shook with the demon's next words.

  Very cute.

  Like a puppy. Like a kitten. Like something without any power at all, something that it could play with, or crush, however it wished.

  Marcy took another step back, seriously rethinking her bravest moment. The demon swelled forward, stretching, reaching for her.

  The "No, no, no" behind her got closer—and Tomas and Ricky, grappling with each other, stumbled into the searing space between her and the creature.

  "No!" wailed Ricky. But he was no match for the way Tomas strong-armed him toward the door Marcy had opened. Tomas had never looked so vicious, so dangerous, so competent.

  God, but she could really love him.

  Then Tomas pushed Ricky through the door. The demon sizzled, Good enough.

  And with a sudden rush of hot air, the door slammed shut, leaving complete normalcy behind it.

  Normalcy, and no Tomas.

  Marcy stared, panting, for barely a moment. Then she lunged forward, wrenched open the door and nearly tripped over the toilet in a small, perfectly normal half-bath.

  No. No! She wasn't going to lose him.

  Desperate, she ran to the wet bar and looked at Ricky's grimoire. At the top of the page, in big letters, it said:

  damouaz

  Not Latin, that was for sure. Greek, maybe? Either way, she couldn't read it… except that the first letter looked like a D. Could it be the name Ricky had given the demon? What was it…

  Daiesthai.

  It didn't do her a lot of good; she couldn't read the short sentence that came after it, and she couldn't remember clearly enough to repeat it. It had sounded like "El" something, but what? What?

  To her horror, she felt tears burning her scorched eyes. She shouldn't have been so hesitant to learn magic, shouldn't have been so afraid to disturb the universe. Now it might be too late. Now all she had left was her own meager power…

  But this time she couldn't allow herself the luxury of that kind of thinking. Meager power? What the hell made her so meager? So she couldn't speak Greek, or Latin, or whatever it was.

  She ran back to the door, to the half bath, and shut it. Then she drew herself up, took a deep breath, and with every bit of power in her shouted, "Daiesthai, open!"

  And she opened the door.

  And a furnace of heat surged out at her. Hell, again.

  Marcy thought back to the spell she'd done last night, to all the reading she'd done for months. She could do this. She had to do this.

  She spread her hands, spread her arms as if to embrace everything she'd been given. Every bit of life. Every bit of hope. Her family. Her years with Snowball. Her day with Tomas—

  And she ad-libbed.

  "I call upon the Goodness of the Universe," she called out. "I draw your power to me and around me, for the good of all and according to the free will of all. Protect me and mine amidst this darkness. Let me see more clearly, to give more back into this world. By all the gifts I have been given, let it be so!"

  And she stepped through, into the portal.

  Like that, she was falling, tumbling, through the darkest of darkness, being thrown about the chaos and confusion and heat and misery. Screams of the damned echoed around her. Hisses and slithers and slices of despair cut across her, but she clung to her gratitude like a lifeline. To her gratitude—and one thing mor
e.

  Love.

  When she looked deep inside herself, where her strength had always been, dormant, waiting for her to access it, she sensed a light. A connection. It was love, and not just for her beloved cat. Love drew her soul to another, out there in the chaos. It drew her to Tomas Martinez.

  She reached out and said, "Be there." At least, she thought she did. In this great, roiling void, she heard nothing.

  But her spread arms, which had stayed open like wings, wrapped around a hard, solid body that she recognized by more than its rich, spicy, earthy scent. She recognized Tomas on more levels than she'd ever suspected she could access. She held him, tight, trying not to give in to the fear that now, so close to having everything she'd hesitated to dream of, she was afraid she might lose it.

  She would not lose it. Not to Ricky and his pet demon.

  Even if there were psychos like Ricky Everitt in the world, there were heroes like Tomas. Even if there was a Hell dimension paralleling her own reality—and who knew how many other kinds of dimensions beyond that—her reality paralleled them right back.

  She wasn't falling through chaos. She refused to be.

  She was standing in a suburban half bath.

  "Home," she shouted, summoning the last of her flagging strength. Again, she couldn't hear her own voice, so she tried again, louder.

  "Home!"

  This time she heard it. She also heard the outraged cry of "MROWRM!"

  Marcy forced her eyes open—and her gaze met the golden tiger eyes of Tomas Martinez, his own gaze peering through the messy fall of long, dark hair to caress her face with amazement. She'd done it.

  She'd done it?

  She realized she was wedged fairly tightly against the doorjamb, because the half bath was unnaturally crowded, what with a dazed Father Gregory standing, unhurt, behind Tomas—and something warm and wriggly trapped between Tomas and her.

  Was it… ?

  She looked down, and saw her cat's sooty face peering back up from Tomas's arms, clearly annoyed with the way her day had gone.

  That's when she began to cry.

  Tomas kissed her hot, sensitive cheeks, and reached past her to open the door back into Ricky's temple.

  Cool air flowed into the close, cramped room like a blessing.

  All Tomas wanted to do was to get Marcy—and Snowball—back to their apartment. She'd stopped crying almost immediately, but they'd been through enough for one day. Maybe enough for one or more lifetimes.

  On the bright side, she'd proved damn resilient.

  When Father Gregory said he would call some of his colleagues over, Tomas was just as glad to leave the priest behind to deal with the spiritual cleanup. He had more important things on his mind.

  Only the first being how to get a ticked-off cat home on a motorcycle.

  By unspoken agreement—they'd hardly spoken since their dazed exodus from the half bath—Tomas and Marcy, carrying Snowball, headed up the stairs to her apartment. Both were, not surprisingly, in mild shock.

  He used his passkey to unlock her door. "Stand back."

  "It's all right," she said with quiet certainty.

  Sure enough, the door to 3B swung open into a perfectly normal, neat apartment. Snowball launched herself from Marcy's arms and streaked toward the bedroom, hitting the door hard enough to jar it open.

  Tomas moved to go after the cat, but Marcy stayed him with a soft hand on his arm. "The portal's closed."

  "How can you be so sure?" He shut the door behind them, then quickly opened it. Hallway. He shut it again.

  "I feel it," she said. "It's kind of like one of those sounds you hardly notice until it stops, like the refrigerator hum or traffic outside on the street. I think some part of me was vaguely aware of this… this threat for a long, long time." She laughed, uneven. "But it's not the sort of thing you'd guess in Twenty Questions."

  "Not even Two-Thousand Questions!" He looked at her now, really looked at her for the first time since they'd escaped Hell together.

  Correction—since she'd led him from Hell. He hadn't asked her what the experience had been like for her. But for him, there'd been pain. There'd been fire. He wasn't sure by what luck, other than all his mother's and grandmother's prayers, he'd survived, much less found Snowball and Father Gregory. But every moment of it had been agony.

  And then Marcy had been there, and when she'd wrapped him in her arms the pain not only stopped, it… reversed. Her goodness had protected and healed him.

  It was the purest magic he'd ever known.

  Had he really not thought of her as good-looking before today? Their adventures had left her silky brown hair in a mess, tousled by wind and hellfire, pressed down by a helmet, and framing the prettiest, soot-smeared elfin face and that wide, sensuous mouth of hers. Her long, long legs in his drawstring sweats had a grace to them. Her curves under his T-shirt, while subtle, were equally graceful. And her green eyes held magic.

  Marcy Bridges might just be the most beautiful woman he'd ever met. So, which had changed, him or her?

  Or both?

  "Maybe it was that sound, that threat that kept you from taking a lot of chances," he suggested. It made sense.

  So much for him judging timid people without the full story.

  Marcy laughed a funny, self-deprecating laugh. "It might not be the right explanation, but I sure like it."

  Tomas found himself grinning back. It wasn't just shell shock, was it?

  Marcy cocked her head, squinting at him. "What are you thinking?"

  "I'm thinking you've probably had enough men coming after you tonight."

  She nodded solemnly. "Especially bad boys, huh?"

  Was she teasing him? But considering the tattoo on his wrist and the black leather and the long hair, he didn't guess he could deny the impression now. "Would it help if you knew I owned the building?"

  Marcy said, "It makes absolutely no difference that you own the building." But she said it in a good way, so he kissed her. She kissed him right back. Her purity flowed over him, through him, healing him in even more ways than before.

  Cool. Like a blessing.

  When he straightened, to check her reaction, Marcy leaned into him, her amis wrapping his waist, her cheek resting on his shoulder. He encircled her, too, and rested his cheek on her hair.

  He could get used to this.

  He already was.

  "What I don't understand," she murmured after a long moment, "is why the demon didn't even try to get me. When we were in… wherever."

  "Hell." Tomas doubted it was the Hell—the one he'd learned about in catechism—but it had been a similar flavor all the same.

  "I was protecting myself." Marcy tipped her face up toward his, which meant he had to hold his own head up but, on the bright side, meant he got to see her proud smile. "With magic."

  "With magic," he agreed.

  "But it's as if Daies—"

  Tomas kissed her, quickly, then drew back to explain, "Let's not say its name, all the same. Something I learned from my abuela."

  She nodded. "It's as if it didn't even want me anymore."

  Tomas blinked down at her. "This is a bad thing?"

  "No!" She laughed, free and happy and maybe, just maybe, his. Given time and a little risk-taking. "I'm just curious."

  Tomas considered it—and grinned at the most likely conclusion. "Did the demon really say it wanted to make you its bride?"

  "Yes! It said…" But she stopped herself, eyes widening. "No, you're right! It said I would become its mate."

  "I think," said Tomas, trying not to laugh, "that Ricky Everitt was a virgin."

  Marcy didn't look as if she was fighting a laugh… but she didn't look particularly saddened by Ricky's fate, either. If the man had been going to sacrifice anybody, it was only right he should sacrifice himself.

  "Now I'm the only one who'll decide where I'm going," she said, thoughtful. "But you know… I still don't think there's anything wrong with waiting for the right love
r."

  Then she smiled a slow, remarkably devilish smile.

  *****

  Look out for Evelyn's next title,

  coming out in late 2004

  from our upcoming Bombshell line!

  Dear Reader,

  Being invited to work on the When Darkness Falls anthology was a joy for me. I've admired Silhouette's forays into the dark side of romance since before the short-lived Shadows line, and appearing with such great authors as these is quite an honor! And yet coming up with a story that was short enough for this venue, and something new for me and yet something grounded in enough classic mythology to counter the humor I wanted to toss in, was quite the challenge.

  Then, at a fantasy-writing convention, I picked up a button that read "Open a dark portal to a dimension of incalculable evil first thing in the morning, and nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day."

  I thought: that depends on what comes through the portal.

  Thus "The Devil She Knew" was born. By creating a hero and heroine who already knew each other, and keeping their story down to one day, I stayed within the limits of the novella. Although I've written Wiccans before, I'd never explored a character so uncertain about her personal power that she's afraid to use her own magic. And as for classic… what can be more classic than a sacrificial demon-bride story?

  Whether I nailed the humor, and yet managed to keep it scary, is up to you to decide. But isn't that what Halloween is all about? A little fun. A little fear. A little magic…

  Happy Halloween.

  Evelyn Vaughn