by Libby Sparks
That sent a little shock through her, tingles running up her spine and settling at the base of her neck, making the hair there stand up. “What do you mean, you didn’t send it to me?”
“I didn’t send it.”
“Jake, you had to. Who else knew I was at the ho—”
The demons had. They’d been in the lobby, waiting for her and Jake. But if the demons had sent this to her, then…
“Should I, maybe, get rid of this?” she asked, holding it now like she had a snake by the tip of its tail and it might coil around and bite her at any second.
Jake stared at the necklace in silence. Then he shuddered as if he were coming out of a trance. “No. No, keep it. It’s a very old and powerful symbol among demons. It’s for protection.”
“But if you didn’t send it, then who did? I can’t see those creeps you barbecued last night wanting to send me anything to protect me.”
Jake just shrugged and settled back into his seat. “Someone must have had your best interests at heart.”
Brianna took the necklace off again and looked at it, with its heavy oval pendant swinging lazy circles on the end of the chain. She’d had the thing with her, in her pocket, all of last night, and she’d been shot, chased, and terrified. In the end of it all, she had been put in the middle of an explosion that had killed two…well, two demons.
But… she’d survived. So maybe there was something to this being her protection after all. It sure couldn’t hurt to hang onto it.
So she put it back into her pants pocket and promised herself that she’d figure it out later. Right now, she had to get them started towards home.
“So, how does this whole demon thing work, exactly?” she asked, putting the car in drive and heading for where the parking lot exited onto the highway.
“I told you, that’s—”
“Complicated.”
“—complicated,” he said at the same time as she did. They both laughed and Jake playfully pushed at her shoulder. “Well, it is.”
“Good thing we have a long drive ahead of us for you to explain it to me, then. You don’t have, like, horns or anything, do you?”
“No, no horns. That is really stereotypical of you, by the way.”
“What about a tail?” She sat and waited for traffic to go by with her signal light on.
“You want to check me for one?”
She nearly choked and pulled out quicker than she had meant to. A red pickup truck swerved to avoid her with tires squealing.
She watched him out of the corner of her eye as she headed north on Route 169. A few miles down the road toward Interstate ninety, she finally found her voice.
“I want you to tell me everything.”
“Everything?”
She nodded. “I think I’ve earned it, don’t you?”
He leaned back, bracing his knee up on the dash. “Yeah, I suppose you have. You’re sure? Some of this…you might not want to know.”
Brianna reached her hand out to hold his. He turned away from her but his hand held hers tightly. This wasn’t going to be easy for him. She could tell.
“Hey,” she said, watching him and the road at the same time. He looked so vulnerable right now, sitting in her car, leaning up against the window. It was just like he was any young guy with issues. “We’ll take it slow, okay? Tell me what you want to. I can wait for the rest.”
He didn’t turn away from the window but she saw the ghost of a smile. He took a deep, shaky breath, and began to talk. She knew he was holding some things back from her. But even so, it didn’t take her long to understand why he kept telling her that his life was complicated.
Complicated didn’t begin to cover it.
Chapter 9
Somewhere in the middle of Indiana Brianna stopped for gas. They pulled into a place that had twelve pumps standing ready outside a huge convenience store with a Mexican fast-food restaurant inside. It was a busy spot, with people coming and going and cars pulling through the parking lot in controlled patterns.
“Try not to blow this one up,” she said to him.
“Very funny.”
“Yeah, you think so?” She winked at him. “After everything you’ve just told me, I thought we could use a little humor.”
Jake had talked for more than an hour straight about his secret. He’d never told anyone about what he was before. He wouldn’t have told Brianna either, no matter what he promised her, if it hadn’t been for the two Hunters showing up in Blue Earth like that. He had been sure he’d lost them back in Montana. Obviously he’d been wrong.
Brianna had asked him question after question, and he had been able to give at least a partial answer for most of them. Some of them, though, he’d simply avoided. When that didn’t work, he’d had to tell her a couple of times that he just wasn’t ready to talk about those parts. Not yet. She’d nodded each time and said she understood, even though she was dying to know.
“Did I say too much?” he asked her as they pulled up to a green gas pump with the number nine on it. “You said you wanted to hear this.”
She parked the car at the pump and shut the engine off. Leaning across the center console, she put her hand on his shoulder. “I did ask you, because I want to know. I’d like to hear more, when you’re ready.”
He liked her touch. There was something very…right, about having Brianna this close to him. Close enough to touch. Close enough to talk to. Close enough to share his biggest secret, and his biggest shame with.
He cleared his throat. “I’ll tell you more later. Over lunch, maybe? You feel like burgers?”
“Yeah, maybe. But not now. I’d like to get through Indiana before we stop.”
“Sure. Look, I have to use the men’s room. Be right back?”
She rolled her eyes. “So even demons have small bladders?”
“Well, yeah. It’d be pretty weird if we never went pee, don’t you think?”
He left her at the gas pump and went across the parking lot to the convenience store. Inside, there were racks of clothing and shelves of food and tissue boxes and supplies of all kinds for the weary traveler. Then, past a display of stuffed teddy bears, there was the Mexican restaurant with its plastic chairs and garishly painted tables and signs for taco platters and refried beans.
A sign hanging from the ceiling pointed to the restrooms at the back of the store. Jake made his way through the place and the crowd of people inside who were gathering things up for their trips or heading to the restaurant to eat. It was nearing noon now and the place was starting to fill up.
There was only one guy in the men’s room. Jake went to one of the urinals and stood there, pretending to be doing his business as the other guy finished and zipped himself back up. The guy washed his hands and left without giving Jake a second look.
As soon as the door closed again Jake threw the deadbolt lock in place. He checked through the bathroom, including all four of the stalls, to make sure he was alone. Then he went to the furthest of the three sinks set into a countertop between the urinals and the toilet stalls. A tall rectangular mirror was hung on the wall above the sink. It was the mirror that Jake needed.
From the back pocket of his jeans he took out a blue cylinder the size and shape of a ball point pen. But when he set the tip of it against his right index finger and clicked the push button, what jabbed into him was a small needle. It pricked his flesh and produced a single red drop of blood.
This was an arcane and unnecessarily complicated way to contact someone. But Jake had a feeling that the person he needed to speak to wouldn’t answer a phone call.
Putting the bleeding tip of his finger against the mirror’s glass, Jake drew a string of symbols all around the edge, followed by seven interlaced swirling patterns that filled up the rest of the mirror’s surface.
When he was finished, he sucked on his finger. He watched as the blood he had used absorbed into the mirror, as if the surface had now become porous. Good. Just what he’d been waiting for.
The chant done, he called the summoning. “Beleth, I call you to this place.”
Nothing happened. Jake still stared into the mirror smeared with his blood in ritual symbols. He braced his hands against the edge of the sink top hard enough to feel it bite into the palms of his hands. He should have expected as much.
“Beleth,” he called forth again.
This time, swirled mist fogged the mirror briefly. But that was all.
Rage poured through him. “Now, Beleth!”
Mocking laughter echoed through the restroom. The mists formed again in the mirror and this time condensed on the surface, heavy beads of moisture sliding down the glass, erasing his smears of blood. As the blood was washed away, it revealed the face of Beleth.
Beleth had a face, but in different times and with different incarnations the demon of all things had chosen different masks to wear. This time, an older man with long, stringy brown hair sneered at Jake, washed out gray eyes dancing with amusement.
“You can’t call me to you whenever you want, you know,” Beleth said.
“And yet, I just did.” Jake studied the face before him. “This is what you went with this time?”
Beleth narrowed his eyes at him. “I could say the same of you, Jake Valcour. What do you want?”
“Why did you give Brianna the pendant?”
“Ha! You really need to learn your place, don’t you boy? I gave it to her for its purpose. And because I can. And because I felt like it. And because maybe she needs it.”
“Needs it? A protection pendant? Who are you protecting her from? Huh? Tell me that.”
The man in the mirror, the demon in human form, glared at him. “Figure it out.”
Jake slammed a fist against the glass. Tiny cracks webbed out from where he’d struck. “I will not come back to you. I am not coming back to Hell. I am free!”
Beleth was already fading, the strength of the summoning nearly spent. “You will be mine again, boy. You play your little game a while longer. Go ahead. Hell,” Beleth swore, coming back into sharp focus for a few bare seconds, the cracks distorting the left side of his face, “play with the little darlin’ too, if you need to. Use her up and drop her dead somewhere for all I care. A boy’s got to have his fun. But, you will be mine again.”
The face dwindled away altogether as Beleth finished talking. Jake was left staring at his own broken reflection in the mirror. His anger left him. All he felt in that moment was emptiness.
Someone knocked loudly on the bathroom door. “Hey, hurry up in there!”
Jake sighed heavily. What had he hoped to accomplish here? Had he ever gotten the truth from Beleth? Ever? There was a reason he was called the prince of lies.
Faintly as he turned away, Jake heard Beleth whispering.
“You’ll be mine again, boy. And all you’ll be to that little darlin’ is the man who gets her killed.”
Jake winced and gritted his teeth as he left the bathroom. Deep down he knew that he was putting her in danger, and there was slim chance of her not ending up injured or killed no matter how hard he tried to protect her. Slowly he reached up and grabbed a fistful of his hair in frustration. Jake tugged on as he groaned in frustration and didn’t let go until he made it back outside.
In the parking lot he found Brianna parked up in a spot next to the store. She waved to him from her open window. “Hey, you ready to go?”
He looked at her, the short dark hair that framed her beautiful face, her deep crystal blue eyes, her wry smile. And behind the beauty, Jake knew, was a strong soul. She was amazing. And Beleth had told him that he would be the death of her.
He didn’t want anything to happen to her. Especially not because of him. For just a moment he knew he should walk away from her, and let her live her life.
But then she leaned out the window further with a smile that was just for him. “Come on, Jake. I’m waiting for you.”
And he knew that where he wanted to be right now was with her. Beleth was a liar. Jake would never do anything to get Brianna hurt.
And besides, she had the pendant.
To Be Continued..
Table of Contents
Copyright
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
