Eighth Grave After Dark

by Darynda Jones

  He made a call while ordering everyone around us to do this or that. They helped him pack Beep up. But I just wanted answers. I seemed to know everything I’d ever wanted to know, but suddenly it all meant nothing.

  “So we fight them. Like always,” I said when he got off the phone.

  “He sent a group to lead them.”

  “Okay,” I said, needing more.

  “Gods from another dimension, three of them, and their dimension makes hell look like a water park. They are ruthless and powerful beyond belief, and they are more potent than even you.”

  “There is no such thing,” I said, my temper flaring. The earth quaked beneath our feet.

  He took hold of my arm to calm me. “More potent. Not more powerful. Not even close, but you have distinct disadvantages. You care about those around you. They care only about the destruction of anything and everything standing in their way.”

  “The gods of Uzan?” Osh asked, paling before my eyes.

  Reyes offered a curt nod.

  “Here? In this dimension? They’ll destroy it.”

  “Exactly. They’ll destroy everything on earth to get to her. My father is not going to give up until our daughter is dead. And your light, the same light that is a beacon of hope for the departed, is now a death sentence for our daughter. That is how they will find her.” He forced another blanket into an already bulging backpack. “He planned for this, Dutch. All of it. He set this in motion centuries ago, from the time the prophecies were first written.”

  “If he wanted her dead so bad, why didn’t Denise kill her when she had the chance? She could have done it at any time.”

  His mouth thinned. “He wanted to do it himself. At first. Now he doesn’t care.”

  “This is insane,” I said, scrubbing my face with my fingertips, unable to believe what was happening, but he kept working, ignoring my ideas, promising me we’d come up with our own plan once Beep was safely away. “Is this because you can’t trust me? Because of my impulsive nature?”

  “No, though it would serve you right.”

  I couldn’t argue that, and I knew he wouldn’t even consider such a move if there were any other option. “Surely, we don’t have to send her away this minute.”

  “What do you think he was waiting for?” Reyes asked, facing me head on. “Lucifer, as he spoke to you, drawing out your conversation, stalling.”

  “The gods? They’re already here?”

  “They’ve been here, waiting for word from my father.”

  “But how? How can Lucifer command such beings?”

  He went back to work. I wasn’t even paying attention to what he was packing. “He doesn’t command them, but you don’t get to be the king of hell and not make a few nasty friends. We fought alongside them more than once.”

  “You fought with them?”

  “Dutch, you saw what I am. That surprises you?”

  “Everything about this surprises me.”

  A knock on the front door caught my attention. Uncle Bob answered it, his expression grave. The Loehrs walked in with Mr. Alaniz, the PI, trailing them. I sank into the nearest chair. Not this. Not now. Why were they here? What would this do to our already splintering relationship?

  “Anything you want to tell me?” Reyes asked, his movements sharp and quick. “I asked you not to contact them.”

  “I know,” I said, shame engulfing me.

  “So I did it instead.”

  I blinked up at him. “What?”

  “After a while, after the thought of Beep and having a family, I understood what you meant. They deserved to know what happened to me. So I contacted them months ago.”

  “But, how did you know I contacted them as well?”

  He indicated Mr. Alaniz with a gesture.

  I gaped at him. “You were in on it the whole time? From the beginning?”

  Mr. Alaniz nodded, shame lining his face.

  “Even the letter and the ultimatum that I tell Reyes the truth?” I said to the man I thought was my PI.

  “I was trying to force your hand,” Reyes answered for him. “You’d contacted them against my wishes. I wanted you to tell me. To be honest with me.”

  I wanted to apologize, but all I could think about was my daughter being sent away from me because I was the one thing in the universe that would lead to her death.

  “I saw something else,” he said, his voice thick with sorrow. “It was my father who had me kidnapped in the first place, taken from the Loehrs.”

  “Reyes,” I said, aghast. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be. They were my only contingency plan.”

  “What do you mean?” When he didn’t answer, I put two and two together. “They’re going to take Beep?”

  “For now, until we can figure out our next step.”

  “But that would mean you knew this was going to happen. You prepared for us having to give up our child.”

  “I suspected. It was always a possibility.”

  “I didn’t!”

  He bowed his head. His sorrow was just as great as mine, his pain just as agonizing. “They’re good people, Dutch. They’ll take good care of her until all this is over.”

  “But they’re going into this blind. They don’t know who she is. What she’s up against. They’ll be taking her under false pretenses, and they’ll be in danger.”

  “You’re wrong,” Mrs. Loehr said. I turned to her, studied her kind face, her olive skin, her hair, just as thick and black as it had been when she’d first lost Reyes. “We knew Reyes was a gift from God. We knew he was special. He told me his name the moment he was born. Rey’aziel.”

  “‘The beautiful one,’” I said, translating his name.

  “Yes. That is one interpretation,” Mr. Loehr said. “But it actually means ‘God’s secret.’”

  I blinked in surprise. They were right. In the ancient angelic language, it meant “God’s secret.”

  Reyes scoffed gently. “I appreciate the euphemism, but God did not send me.”

  “Actually, he did,” Mrs. Loehr said. “And nothing you say will ever convince me otherwise.” When her voice cracked, Mr. Loehr placed a gentle arm on her shoulder.

  “You were an answer to our prayers.” She focused on me then. “We will keep her safe until you come back for her. And then we pray we can be a part of her life.”

  My throat tightened at the thought. My heart ached, struggling to beat under the weight of my sorrow.

  I looked at Mr. Wong as he walked up to me. He had allowed everyone to see him. A good thing since he’d taken a turn with Beep and, to everyone’s chagrin, refused to give her up. Until now. He handed her to Mrs. Loehr, her eyes bright with emotion as she cradled my daughter in her arms. All I felt was the good in her. The love. The desire to help her son, her granddaughter, in any way she could.

  It hurt too much to look at Beep, so I looked at Mr. Wong instead, suddenly very aware of who he was.

  “You’re like … like my second-in-command.”

  He bowed his head in acknowledgment.

  “And your name is most decidedly not Mr. Wong.”

  “Just as your title is most decidedly not Your Majesty, Your Majesty. But, if I may be so bold, they will both do for now.”

  I smiled at him. “You knew Osh would tell me.”

  “I’d hoped, as I was forbidden to.”

  “By whom?”

  “You.”

  “That’s right,” I said, remembering. “And the hellhounds?”

  “They are yours to command,” he said. “As am I.”

  I stood and walked to the hellhound I’d stabbed all those months ago, recognizing him. He’d hovered over me for quite some time after I’d stabbed him. I thought at the time it’d been preparing for an all-you-can-eat Charley buffet, but he’d actually been protecting me. All along, everything they had done was for my—and Beep’s—protection. Even patrolling the border of the sacred ground was to keep me on it. Not the other way around.


  I touched the wound I gave him. “I’m sorry for that.”

  His response was something akin to a purr but more like the low hum of an idling Bugatti engine. He nuzzled my hand, pushed his head into my side.

  I heard a crash and turned to Reyes. He stood on unsteady legs, his expression blank, void of emotion. He’d knocked over a small table. The shattered glass of a vase shimmered on the floor. I doubted it registered.

  “We’re ready,” he said to me, to the Loehrs.

  We led them to the door, the room deathly quiet.

  “They’ll need protection,” I said, glancing around at everyone who had gathered to say their good-byes.

  I could now see imprints of light on people, like fingerprints. Their character, their pasts, their probable futures, all written in their auras. The lights shifted and danced on and around them and were as easy for me to read now as the morning paper.

  Just like in the prophecies, there were twelve summoned and twelve sent. Mr. Wong summoned the hounds from hell for Beep’s protection. Satan sent his twelve parasites, hid them among us. But he also sent the gods of Uzan. Reyes and I would have to become hunters. We’d have to find them before they found Beep. It would take time, but we had to succeed.

  Still, the prophecies spoke of an army, Beep’s army beyond the twelve. Her confidants who help her wage war on Reyes’s father in the future. And they were there with us now. Every member of her army had somehow found us. Become a part of our lives.

  I marked them all as we led the Loehrs to their car. The sentry, the scholar, the spiritualist, the healer. I even marked the three guardians, and it just goes to show that the bravest hearts often lie in the least likely candidates. No matter where Beep’s path led, these people were destined to be in her life.

  The departed who had gathered on the lawn watched. They’d just wanted to see her. They shuffled closer for a glimpse, their faces full of hope. Hope. It was an emotion I hadn’t expected from them. Then one by one, they disappeared.

  Sensing my distress, Mrs. Loehr granted me temporary custody. Holding her to me, fighting the sobs that threatened to wrench free, I looked at the Thirteenth Warrior, the one who, according to prophecy, would tip the scales either for or against her. The one who would be the doom of every being on earth if he failed: Osh’ekiel.

  Beneath the powerful exterior lay the heart of a king. And he would love her. The question was, would she accept him? Would she see the good buried beneath the bad? Would she recognize that he was created that way? It wasn’t a choice. It was an imposition. I marked him last as he ran a fingertip over the folds of her tiny ear.

  The sob finally wrenched free as I handed my daughter back to Mrs. Loehr. I couldn’t believe I was losing her after having just met her, but the thing that broke my heart even more was the fact that neither Reyes nor I would be there on that fateful day. The day she would challenge the devil to a duel. While I could see that as clear as the stars in the sky, what I couldn’t see was why we weren’t there for her at the appointed time. Would we die before it happened? Nothing other than death could keep us from her in her time of need, so then why would we not be a part of her army? Why would we not fight side by side with her?

  Only time would tell—and fate could be altered. This could all be altered. I knew how the universe worked now. Time was anything but linear. Prophecies were anything but concrete. We could change it all.

  They buckled Beep into her car seat and turned to say … what? What did one say in such a situation?

  “Wait!” I ran into the house and grabbed Beep’s registration form for her birth certificate and a pen. Then I stepped onto the porch and gestured for my husband to join me.

  “What do we name her?”

  He shook his head sadly.

  “We need to name her after you.”

  “No,” he said, a line appearing between his brows at the thought. “We can’t name her anything that will lead my father’s emissaries to her. Her name has to be completely untraceable.”

  “How about common? Or, at least, not completely uncommon.”

  I bent to write, and he nodded, giving me the go ahead.

  “This is ink. No erasing.”

  “I trust you completely.”

  I tried to smile, failed, then wrote a name on the registry. My celestial father, for all intents and purposes, was named Ran-Eeth-Bijou. My mother, Ayn-Eethial. And my name, the name they gave me when I was created, was Elle-Ryn-Ahleethia.

  My hands shook as I wrote Beep’s real name: Elwyn Alexandra—a version of Reyes’s middle name—Loehr. My vision blurred as I looked up at my husband for approval.

  “It’s perfect.”

  I folded the paper, put it in the envelope with a note I’d written Beep weeks ago, and took it to the Loehrs. As we stood below the starry sky, I couldn’t watch them take Beep away. I closed my eyes, the act only encouraging more tears to fall. Then I just listened. I listened to the sound of the engine as the Loehrs backed out of the drive, tires crunching on pebbles and dried grass. I listened as they wound through the mountain pass, until their car was only an echo bouncing off the canyon walls. I listened until the only sounds I heard were the soft sobs coming from Cookie and Amber. The stalking-off of Osh. The beat of the hounds’ paws as they followed the car. They would never leave her, and that was no small consolation. Then I heard the thud of Reyes’s knees hitting the ground, his breath catching in his lungs.

  I felt arms around me. Pats on my shoulder. Promises that it would get better. But my sorrow only grew. It built and spread and swelled until it swallowed me whole. I glanced up at the stars, at Beep’s planet, and I could no longer suppress the force inside me. A primal scream surged out of me with the release, the energy bursting forth in a blinding flash, and I exploded into a million shards of light.

  * * *

  I pressed my fingers to my head, marveling at the agony therein, wondering why it felt like my brain had just exploded. I was on my back. I wondered about that, too. I didn’t remember being on my back. I didn’t remember being much of anything, my head hurt so bad. Pain rocketed through it in nauseating waves as I tried to figure out where I kept pain medication.

  Then another sensation hit me. A biting cold like I’d never felt before, and I realized I couldn’t remember where I was. Wondering if I’d sleepwalked, I tried to open my eyes. They wouldn’t budge at first, but they were being pelted with ice-cold water, and I needed to find out why.

  It took a minute, but I finally managed to pry them open enough to constitute two slits. Rain fell in huge, sleet-filled drops, stinging my face when they landed. I raised my arms to shield my eyes and saw a huge Rottweiler standing over me. The moment my gaze landed on him, he whimpered and licked my face. But his affection was just as cold as the rain.

  A yellow light floated above me. A security light. Pebbles bored into my back and scraped my elbows as I struggled to a sitting position. I petted the Rottweiler, assured him—her—I was okay. She finally let up and stepped back to give me some space. Still groggy, I looked to my left, then to my right. A dark alley stretched out in either direction. I focused on a faded sign that hung on a door directly in front of me. It read THE FIRELIGHT GRILL. To the left of that, a historical marker on the building itself read THE FIRE HOUSE, EST. 1755, SLEEPY HOLLOW, NY.

  Okay. That answered that.

  With legs made of lead, I took a crack at standing. Once I gained my footing, I stumbled toward the door. Even though it was a back door, I turned the knob and went inside, holding it open for the dog. That would garner a code violation and probably a swift kick out of there if they didn’t call the cops on me first.

  Thick brown hair hung in clumps over my shoulders and down my back. I had to push it out of my face repeatedly with blue, glacial hands. I could only imagine what the rest of me looked like. I glanced down at my waterlogged boots and shook my head. No need to worry about looks at the moment. There were more important things to consider.

  I stepped
inside a dark hallway and walked forward. A small room filled with supplies sat on the right, and a door with an OFFICE sign on my left. Ahead of me was a kitchen. I forced my frozen feet forward, taking it one step at a time. The café itself was dark, but one man was busy in the brightly lit kitchen, cleaning up for the night. A large man with a head of thick black hair slicked back, he wore a cook’s apron as he emptied smaller garbage containers into one large one. He stilled when he spotted me. Reached for a weapon. Raised a spatula.

  “What are you doing in here?” he barked, using a naturally baritone voice to his advantage.

  I raised my hands. The blue ones that shook uncontrollably.

  Another voice came from behind me. A female one. She must have come out of the office. “What’s going on?” she asked, her tone sharp.

  I turned to her. In her early forties, she was large, but she had bright red hair straight out of a box and a pretty round face that had probably seen a tad too much partying in its day. Her heavily lined brows slid together.

  “I just need help,” I said, showing my palms to her as well.

  The dog whimpered, but they didn’t seem to give a lick about her.

  “You can’t be back here.”

  “I know. I’m sorry, I was just— I mean, I was wondering—”

  “Spit it out, girl, before you turn into a chunk of ice. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that shade of blue on anyone before.”

  “Right,” I said through chattering teeth. “I was just wondering … if … if you know who I am.”

  “Why?” she asked, jamming her hands on her hips. “You somebody special?”

  “No. I mean, I was wondering if you know my name.”

  The man chuckled. “Don’t you?”

  I turned to him, hugging myself. “No,” I said, my whole body quaking. “I— I don’t have a clue.”

  Excerpt: Reye’s POV

  “I found her.”

  I turned to the kid, Angel, and tried to keep control of my emotions. I knew it wouldn’t take him long to find her if she was still on earth. My fear was that she’d ascended. That she was no longer on earth and had taken her rightful place as grim reaper. Or even god of her realm. She’d come into her powers. There wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it if that was her choice.