Eighth Grave After Dark

by Darynda Jones

  “What do you want?”

  “So many things. Where to start?”

  The conversation left me fighting for air. It was Reyes. It was his voice. It was his beautiful face. But absent his mannerisms and his convictions and his compassion. This being was nothing like my husband. And yet I couldn’t help but wonder why anyone in this room, including my precious daughter, was still alive. Clearly, he could sic the hounds on us anytime he wanted. What was he waiting for?

  “Actually, I have all I want right here. I’ve taken over my son’s body, a feat that took some doing, as I first had to weaken him by making him worry about you and your creation so much he couldn’t sleep. I had no idea it would take months to get him to the point where I could overtake him, but it was certainly worth the wait. I mean, look at this.” He flexed and stretched, trying out his new body. “I do believe he is as beautiful as I was.”

  “More so, I’m sure.”

  “Well, there you have it. I made a good choice, because the other choice was to track down the champion, the escaped Daeva, and take him instead. I’m just not sure I would look good in teenager.”

  Lucifer’s admission surprised Osh, who’d clearly had no idea that he had been an option.

  “But don’t worry, traitor. I have plans for you.”

  “Why do you need a body at all?”

  “Have you seen the looks my kind gets in this world? Also, I didn’t want to live like a vampire. We can live in the light only if we have a human host. But you know that. Do you also know that no human can contain me? So I created a son.” He checked his nails and smiled in approval. “You should understand before we go much further, I’ve been preparing for this very day for centuries. But one doesn’t just escape from hell. One needs a map, so the mapmakers slaved for thousands of years to create a key to the gates that held me in. We lost millions to the void in the process. I couldn’t risk it falling into the wrong hands, so I imprinted it on my son. In him, actually, thereby creating not just a map, but also a key, a portal. Then I destroyed the original and all those who helped create it, save one.”

  He focused on Osh again, accused him with a glare. “One was never found. Naughty boy. Did you eat my mapmaker?”

  Osh said nothing.

  “I wondered where he’d gone off to, but since you are the only Daeva ever to escape hell and make it to the other side, I’ll assume you had something to do with his disappearance. And so,” he said, refocusing on me, “I was stuck once again. I was hardly going to risk the void without the key, but then one day, I was minding my own business, melting the faces off a few thousand humans, when my son decides to risk a trip back home for that trinket on your finger.”

  The orange diamond. I pressed my mouth together to keep from gasping.

  “Following him out of the void undetected proved far easier than I imagined. It’s such a vast thing and he was traveling at the speed of light, him being a portal and all. And then I was free. Well, free-ish.”

  He hooked his hands behind his back as he explained, and I couldn’t figure out what he was waiting for. Why was he telling me all this? Why he was stalling?

  “I was quite tired of living in the shadows. The remedy for that was also easy. Weakening my son was not. But when one is plagued with nightmares of his wife and child being ripped apart by hellhounds every time he closes his eyes, he’s bound to miss a few nights’ sleep.”

  I leveled my best scowl on him. “You tortured him.”

  “Naturally.”

  Osh was about five feet from me, and I wondered what he was up to. Then I happened to look at Garrett and realized he wasn’t out. He was faking. Great. They probably had a plan. I was so bad at plans, I wished they would have clued me in to theirs.

  “You realize this is not going to end well for you,” I said.

  “And how can it not?”

  “There’s an ancient text that says our daughter will be your downfall.”

  “You humans,” he said, the laugh that escaped him not even remotely similar to Reyes’s, “stumbling upon words that mean nothing, trying to decipher the undecipherable. The man who wrote them was an imbecile.”

  “Yet here you are in all your glory to destroy her. Is that not a confirmation of the documents’ legitimacy? You are going to fail here today.” At least I hoped so. The more he stalled, the more I worried.

  “My dear, I have contingency plan upon contingency plan. Even as we speak, there are twelve dormant parasites from twelve different dimensions waiting inside human hosts. They’ve been here for decades, in this realm, on this planet, and they are just now awakening. Trust me when I say they are very cranky when they first wake up.”

  “Twelve parasites? You sent the twelve? The bad twelve? Then who summoned the hellhounds?”

  That was when I took a really good look at the hounds. They were not snarling at my daughter or snapping at her. They … they were protecting her. A new hope sprang to life inside me. The only person in the room they seemed focused on was Reyes. Their heads down. Their ears back. Their teeth glistening. But every single one of them was turned toward Reyes. No, not Reyes. Lucifer.

  Then I noticed a man. Like the hounds, he was hard to see. His visibility shifted with the light. A shimmer of gold here. A glint of silver there. In fact, he seemed made of light. Pure and powerful.

  One of the hounds nudged him, and he rested a hand on its head before disappearing into the shadows again. He was clad in armor like a prince from an ancient Asian dynasty.

  “Mr. Wong,” I said as I stood stunned by the mere thought of it.

  Though not tall, he stood with the beasts, his shoulders wide, his stance sure and strong as his other hand rested on the hilt of a sword.

  He bowed when I finally saw him, as though he’d been waiting. “Tsu lah, Val-Eeth.”

  He spoke in an ancient language that I recognized but didn’t quite understand.

  I thought back, tried to reconcile what I was seeing with what I knew to be true. The Twelve never actually attacked me. They attacked others, anyone whom they saw as a threat. Me, they simply tried to drag to safety. To keep me out of harm’s way.

  “Who sent you?” I asked Mr. Wong.

  “You did. Before you became human, you sent me to be your protector, your sentry until you finished your duties here and went home.”

  “You are like an archangel, only from our realm?”

  He nodded, accepting that analogy.

  I wanted to run to him. To hug him. To beg his forgiveness for that time I tried repeatedly to put a lampshade on his head. But with the outcast up from the basement, salutations would have to wait.

  Lucifer was actually quite interested in our conversation. I got the feeling he hadn’t expected backup.

  “What happens to the human hosts of these parasites?” I asked Lucifer. We were in a standoff, but he was taking it all in stride, letting us ramble and ask questions. I had a feeling he wouldn’t normally do such a thing. He was biding his time, perhaps expecting backup of his own.

  “They are all already dead.”

  I closed my eyes, horrified.

  “Easier to control when they have no mind to fight back.”

  “I understand. But this is between you and me. Let my family go.”

  “We’re bargaining now?”

  “We have twelve hellhounds that I’m pretty sure would just as soon rip your face off as look at you. We have a testy Daeva with a score to settle. We have the equivalent of an archangel who loves to use that sword of his. And we have me, the Val-Eeth. Surely you’d be willing to make a trade.”

  “I’ll give you the woman,” he said, bargaining, again, to bide his time.

  But so was I. I wanted Donovan and the guys out. And Garrett as well.

  I glanced at Denise as she crouched in the corner. She gazed at me, seemingly grateful she was part of the deal.

  With the barest wave of my hand, Artemis sank into the floor beside me then rose from the staircase right above Deni
se’s head.

  “Was the story real?” I asked her. “The one about the blue towels? About the angel you saw in the hospital? About your mother’s car accident and your father telling you that sometimes a blue towel was more than just a towel?”

  She frowned, confused, but couldn’t help a quick glance at her boss. He didn’t move. With a resigned sigh, she stood. “Yes, it was all real. But she was too much of a coward to tell you herself. Still, it was the perfect way to get inside.” She looked at Lucifer. “May I have her now?” she asked.

  “Manners,” he said, scolding. “We have more guests coming.”

  My chest tightened the second realization sank in. He meant Cookie and Amber. And knowing Cookie, she’d called Uncle Bob. He was surely on his way back here, and possibly with Quentin. That’s what he’d been waiting for. Because the more people I tried to save, the more chances he would have of getting to Beep. And if not him, then Denise. Or whatever was inside Denise.

  Apparently the hellhounds had thought of that as well. Before I could say anything, one lunged forward, catching Denise by the throat. Artemis launched herself off the staircase and clamped on to Denise’s arm.

  I gasped and watched in horror as she changed. Her face stretched as a row of long, needlelike teeth grew out of her mouth. She shook Artemis off then latched on to the hound. It cried out, but another was on her back. It sank its teeth into her rib cage, until her fingernails grew into sharp, steely points. She fended him off her with one, clean swipe.

  They turned on her, growling and snapping with Artemis right beside them as she did the same. The fact that Denise was a snarling, garish parasite wasn’t that surprising. It was more the fact that she didn’t kill Beep when she had the chance. She’d had ample opportunity, and I had no idea when she’d ceased to be Denise. Days ago, apparently. Possibly weeks. Then why wait? And how could a demon, a being of pure evil, pass so effortlessly as a human? It had delivered a human baby, for heaven’s sake. It had quite possibly saved Beep’s life. And yet we’d had no idea what she really was. Even Artemis didn’t know.

  The bikers had joined in the fight. Donovan, unaware of the hounds in the room, broke a chair over Denise’s head, and Eric was using a fireplace poker as a sword. Michael just kind of stood back and soaked it all in. He was never one to rush into anything.

  A third beast surrounded her, and I could tell she expected Lucifer to help her. How foolish to expect quarter from a man who would create his own son just so he could inhabit his body. Ethics were not his strong suit.

  She hissed at the beasts, swiped as Eric got a little too close with the poker, and fell when the hounds converged, each ripping a piece of her apart.

  I turned away. Even knowing the real Denise had probably been dead for days now, it wasn’t easy to watch.

  Once the beasts were finished with her, they slowly circled Lucifer. Only, that happened to be my husband’s body they were about to rip apart.

  I summoned Artemis back to me before glancing at Mr. Wong, now able to see the incredible power that encased him, and silently pleaded with him not to let the Twelve kill my husband.

  “You sent me to protect you at all costs,” Mr. Wong whispered to me, though I could hear him clearly. “He is a threat. There is no help for it.”

  Fine. I was back to fighting hellhounds.

  “Hey!” I yelled at them, crouching down as though I would attack them.

  “You would give up your life for his?” Lucifer asked.

  “Of course, you idiot.”

  He smiled. “Rey’aziel is very, very unhappy about that.”

  “Yeah, well, he would be.”

  A hound snapped at him, and in that instant when his focus swept to the hound, Osh was at my side. He no longer had a choice. Reyes was about to die, and I was the only one who could send Satan back to hell and save my husband in the process. He wrapped his arms around me, leaned in, put his mouth at my ear, and whispered my celestial name.

  What hit me next was like an epiphany times infinity. It all made sense.

  In an instant, a power like I’d never felt before flowed through me like lightning in my veins. Just like Reyes told me, with the knowledge of my name came billions of memories. I remembered my realm, my people, the gods that came before me. The memories were like flashes of camera light, only a million at a time. Then another million. Then the next. I remembered the creation of my universe and every universe thereafter. I remembered the wars. So many wars. So many lives lost, both celestial and mortal, each species of intelligence a little different from the others, yet each capable of a love greater than life.

  And I remembered my decision to shift onto this plane. Though Reyes had seen me centuries ago, I saw him first. Knew he was capable of greatness. Called dibs.

  God promised to leave earth to humans, to leave them to their own devices. He could only intervene if asked, if prayed to. In His infinite wisdom, however, He found a loophole. Another god could keep Satan at bay. And that god’s human child could destroy him.

  I understood. I knew why my daughter—our daughter—was such a threat to Lucifer. She truly was born a human. She was conceived from both of our human sides. There was nothing supernatural about her conception. About her birth. She was human through and through. True, she would be a human with extraordinary gifts, but she was human nonetheless, and she would be his downfall. This was why I’d agreed to come. I knew my purpose, and I knew hers. I knew what she would be capable of.

  But for now …

  I smiled at Lucifer, at the monster inside my husband, and while he looked like the man I’d fallen in love with centuries ago, the man who would do anything for our daughter, for me, he was not. He didn’t have a key to the void like Reyes did. Locking him back in the basement would give our daughter time to grow, to become stronger, to learn how to defeat her grandfather and destroy him forever.

  Lucifer had raised his hand, blocking the light flowing out of me. Then he realized what had happened. He panicked.

  “You have no jurisdiction over me!” he yelled, backing away. “Your ordination precludes authority over anything other than mortals. Only one born of humans can command me, can embrace or deny what I offer. Put simply, that was the deal.”

  “I am human.”

  “You are a god hiding behind the rotting layers of human flesh. You are no more human than I.”

  He had a point.

  I walked over to him, grazed my fingertips along the hides of the hounds as I wound through them, and stood nose to nose with my husband’s father. I placed a hand on his chest, moved it seductively to his heart. Interest leapt within him. Then I reached inside him, searching for the immortal being cowering there.

  He grinned and wrapped one hand around the back of my neck and one on my jaw, preparing to snap my neck.

  His voice grew hoarse. “Honey, in this universe, I’m the big, bad wolf,” he said, enjoying the thought of my death. “That shit doesn’t work on me.”

  I grinned back and every muscle in his body flexed as he twisted my head around. Or tried to. Even with all his strength, with all his incredible power, he was no match for the seven original gods residing within me.

  I reached in farther and he grabbed my arm, fighting the agony I was putting him through, stunned.

  He was even more stunned when I ripped him out of my husband’s body. Reyes crumpled to the floor, unconscious as I held his father. Lucifer was massive, his body taking up half the room, part demon, part grotesque, but a part of him was still an angel, too. The beautiful being he once was had become a shell filled to the brim with hatred, judgment, and indifference. Evil.

  He was struggling to breathe under the pressure of my hold. “How?” he asked, his voice straining.

  “Honey,” I said, mocking him, “I’m a god. That shit works on everyone.”

  I looked to the side. The hounds had moved back, given me room to work. I leaned over Reyes, placed one hand on him, used his power, his key, to open the gates of h
ell.

  Lucifer fought me, but it was like a gnat fighting an eighteen-wheeler. The gate opened, and with one last gesture—my sauciest wink—I tossed his ass off our plane.

  The gate closed and I collapsed across Reyes, petting his hair, begging him to be okay. Just then, Beep started crying, and I rushed to her, relief flooding every nook and cranny of my body because she was okay. I took her to Reyes as he stirred. Osh had knelt beside him, too. Then Garrett and Artemis joined us.

  Reyes opened his eyes and turned onto his back. I touched his face. Smiled. Told him we were okay. But the turbulence in my husband’s eyes left little doubt that I was wrong.

  16

  EARTH: THE INSANE ASYLUM OF THE UNIVERSE.

  —T-SHIRT

  “But I don’t understand,” I said as Osh and Garrett helped Reyes to his feet. He swayed a little, then repeated the words he’d ripped straight from my worst nightmare.

  “We have to send her away. Now.”

  “You mean, we’re going away with her like we’d planned. We’re taking a helicopter to that island.”

  “The island doesn’t matter anymore.” He strode to the kitchen as we followed.

  “I saw his plans,” he said. “My father’s. We— We have no choice.”

  He started throwing things in a bag, Beep’s things, her bottles and formula.

  “I saw his plans. He will not give up until she is dead.”

  “But I’m a god,” I said, arguing with him. “I know my celestial name. Surely between the two of us, we can protect her.”

  “You don’t understand. You are his plan. You are the beacon of light that is going to lead his soldiers right to her.”

  “Yes, demons. We’ve handled them before. We can do it again.”

  He stopped just long enough to tell me, “Not his demons. Not this time. Demons from other dimensions. Stronger. More powerful.”