by Jenn Stark
Tightening her coat, Dana stepped back into the night, heading for home. She leaned into the breeze that swirled along the street until she finally reached Ninth, turning left into a whole new burst of wind. The street ran straight as an arrow to the lake, and the gusts here always blew right through your bones. Head bent, shoulders hunched, Dana huffed out a breath, then suddenly felt a quick uneasiness pass through her. She slowed a half step before forcing herself to walk normally.
It was back again. The sensation of being watched.
“He’s watching you,” Willie had said.
But whatever was out there, it sure didn’t feel like her dad.
Keeping her head down, Dana scanned the street. Without the cheery light of the bars’ Christmas decorations to balance the night, the shadows seemed murkier here, more dangerous. Adding to the ominous atmosphere, the right side of the street was a construction site, the sidewalks torn away, the buildings half-shrouded in mismatched scaffolding, plywood, and ripped plastic sheeting. Only St. John’s Cathedral glowed in the distance ahead, a welcome beacon of safety. She wondered what Father Franks was doing right now, in the untracked early morning hours before the storm of Cleveland’s grandest Christmas Eve celebration. Probably sleeping, which she would be doing soon. Almost home, she thought, moving forward again.
She felt the prickling sensation deepen.
Dana swallowed, walking a hair faster, the muscles in her injured leg beginning to throb again—no longer in pain, but awareness. Something really felt wrong here.
She eased opened her jacket to provide easier access to her gun. She didn’t want to spook herself into doing something stupid, but she also hadn’t spent nearly two months in rehab only to get jumped by some street punk on her first night out.
The lit cathedral was only a little ways up the street, but home remained the technically closer refuge. Only one more block to go. She cut across Euclid at an angle, staying well away from the construction debris as she picked up her pace again and the deserted buildings’ plastic sheeting snapped and fluttered in the stiff wind. She passed an open section of the construction site, the graffitied plywood on the other side of the street suddenly giving way to eerie, complete blackness.
That’s it, she thought. There’s something in there, watching me.
She felt it as clearly as she felt the butt of her gun, even if she couldn’t yet see what lurked there in the darkness. Who lurked there, she corrected her rushing mind. Not what. She had to believe it was a who. Maybe she’d interrupted a vagrant rifling the construction site. Or maybe it was the thug who’d asked about her at Flannery’s.
“Okay, so we’ve got company,” Dana murmured to herself. “No problem.” She pressed the alert button on her phone to notify the on-call tech at Griffin Security. If she didn’t check in with another call in a mere two minutes, the tech would notify Max and the police with an urgent distress call, and one of Cleveland’s finest would be dispatched to her precise coordinates, sirens blaring.
A brand-new fail-safe measure at Griffin Security, instituted after the attack on Lester. She’d never actually imagined having to use it, though. Certainly not this soon.
Dana paused, unable to resist the urge, and stared straight into the absolute darkness across the street. If these were the same men from before, men with guns, her alert probably wouldn’t matter anyway. Either way, it was time to pound the pavement. To really test her newly healed leg.
But it was already too late.
Directly across from her, in the open black maw of the construction wall, the darkness erupted. Four figures burst from the opening, forgotten shadows springing to new life.
And the shadows were racing toward her.
Dana reared back as the night surrounding her literally screamed, all the half-remembered nightmares of the past two months rushing back into her brain with a paralyzing hailstorm of fear and terror.
She knew these men. These things. These were the same attackers who’d come after her eight weeks ago. And just as it had then, her world was suddenly going red, the landscape coated in an odd, shifting crimson haze. She recognized it; she understood it. There was nothing she could do to stop it.
And, most frightening of all, a part of her almost welcomed it.
“Get back!” she yelled, waving her gun, struggling to recapture reality, even as her legs somehow carried her several yards down the street, only to realize that some of her attackers had slipped past her, cutting her off.
Now they all came toward her, panting and snarling, and Dana opened her eyes even wider as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. Their bodies were distorted, misshapen in odd angles. Too large in places, too twisted. Not normal men at all.
It was Halloween all over again, and Dana now understood why she’d blocked so much of that first attack out. As they had been that horrible night, these men’s faces were also swollen, broken, their eyes wild with lunacy, jaws gaping with hunger.
Not only Halloween either. There was something in these men she’d seen in the wolves too, from the other night. The wolves and…something else. Someone? She couldn’t remember.
Focus! Her confusion was a trick of the shadows, of her own panic and fear. What else could it be? This wasn’t a world of actual demons or monsters.
Whatever her attackers were, they’d completed the circle around her to block off any hope of escape. One of them laughed, a rough, urgent sound, and they pressed inward, snuffling with excitement. Fear shoved an icy spike into her chest, and—
And then it was suddenly gone.
Dana straightened as warmth flowed through her, a swift, unexpected support. As if she wasn’t alone. And she drew on that new strength, channeling it, as the circle closed around her and the men reached out to her with grasping, pulling fingers—
“Back. Off.” She aimed her gun and pulled the trigger.
A voice rang out beside her. “No! Get back—no!”
As her pistol fired and the closest man hurled himself forward, someone broke through the circle, knocking Dana’s arm up and shoving her back. The gunshot cracked like thunder between the empty buildings, exploding the silence.
Finn jumped in front of her. He slammed his right fist into the closest attacker’s face, and the creature plunged sideways to the street’s curb. Something dark sprayed across the sidewalk across Dana’s boots, and even beneath the echo of her gunshot, she distinctly heard the sound of several teeth clattering into the gutter.
Finn stood directly between her and the others, bending down toward the thing in the street. All she could see was his broad back and shoulders, but she knew it was him. This wasn’t a man she’d soon forget. Or a feeling. She’d sensed him, she realized. She’d simply known he was there.
Finn.
This was all…extremely familiar. Way too familiar.
Her head pounded in sudden pain as Finn yanked up the fallen assailant, then tossed him out at the others who’d already stopped dead in their tracks. Why was he here? And how—?
Finn braced himself, apparently preparing for another attack, and Dana briefly checked him for some evidence that he’d just taken a man out with a single swing. But Finn wasn’t even winded. He shouted in strange words she couldn’t understand, his voice filled with rage and warning. She wanted to believe the words were something European—Polish, maybe, or Czech?—but she didn’t think so. This was something else. Something ancient.
Beyond Finn’s imposing bulk, the other men had regrouped into a loose half circle, their comrade at their feet. Gibbering quietly between themselves, barking sounds similar to Finn’s back at him. Threats. Curses.
They were afraid of him, she realized. As if they knew why he was there, what he was capable of. As if they recognized him.
“How’d you find me?” she demanded, taking a quick step forward. “Who are these men?”
Finn turned and scowled at Dana, and in that smallest space of his hesitation, one of the men lurched out at them, his grapple-l
ike hand punching past Finn and knocking Dana off her feet.
She crunched down hard on her newly restored right leg, a wall of white flashing across her vision, blinding her anew. Staggering, she collapsed face-first to the concrete.
And suddenly, she remembered even more. The pain first. A shrieking, shocking agony in her leg, and then the memory of men like these beneath her own fists, as she pummeled and ripped and tore at them with her own hands. Nausea and rage heaving up within her, violence singing in her veins.
She tasted the cold, briny pavement for a moment more, then rolled over to see Finn brutally knock away the man who’d touched her. As that man slumped in a pile at Finn’s feet, two more took his place—and the closer of the two wielded a glinting blade.
What happened next took only a second or two, Dana knew, but it played out in slow motion before her eyes. The long knife came low, aiming for Finn’s stomach, but he’d shifted downward with the attack, crossing his arms in an X to stop the man’s upward thrust, and shooting his hips back and away from the driving blade.
In the same fluid movement, Finn’s hand slid up the assailant’s arm to the elbow, twisting it awkwardly and forcing the man down, so that the frenzied attacker was hunched over with the knife pointed into his back. Finn moved to drive the blade in with his free hand. All he had to do was punch the hilt down, and Dana half closed her eyes, her blood jumping with expectation—
But he stopped. Instead, he snatched the blade away and twisted the man’s elbow up until there was an audible pop. The man fell forward, and Finn used his right knee to finish him off, then dragged his knife across the man’s throat. Snarling with anger, the attacker geysered with blood that was black as tar, and she flinched away as Finn turned for the other men. So many, she thought…
“Get up,” he ordered to another man on the ground. “You’re free. Stay that way.”
Dana scrambled upright as Finn used the knife to keep the men at arm’s length, then she watched as his face lifted, and he stared down the street. Suddenly, the sound of a car’s screeching tires tore through the street.
“Go,” Finn shouted at her, half pulling, half shoving her up Ninth.
Dana whipped her head around, staring at the oncoming car. Several things imprinted on her at once, with an immediacy she’d never experienced before and couldn’t doubt. Dark Lexus, Pennsylvania plates, license number 074332, speed. Danger! And with eyes that had gone hypersharp with fear and adrenaline, Dana saw the gun shoved out the window, the barrel aimed at Finn.
“Watch out!” she screamed, surging up with such force that Finn fell back.
A bullet ripped between them.
Dana felt her hair blow back as it passed, the heat of the bullet scorching her cheek. Faster than a speeding bullet, she thought, the words hysterical in her mind. She brought her gun around for another shot, fired once, twice, and the car swerved enough for her to turn again, to ready herself for flight. She couldn’t even feel her right leg anymore. She had to escape, had to get them inside, out of harm’s reach.
“This way,” Dana yelled as she started up Ninth toward Superior.
The cathedral.
She could go there; she could always go there. Her father had told her that endlessly and Father Franks had reminded her every year since her dad’s death. She even had a key to the building on her keychain, never before needed—or used. Tonight, that was going to change. She picked up her pace as Finn fell into step with her.
“Where?” he asked, and she felt his arm around her, protecting her, supporting her while urging her on. He wasn’t even winded, she realized, while she could barely form a sentence.
“Up there,” she managed, and then her breathless words were cut off as more bullets peppered the sidewalk beside them. Somewhere, a siren started, but it was too far off, and the wind began to scream again as Finn practically lifted her off her feet and they raced on, moving at a speed Dana wouldn’t have thought possible in light of her battered leg, whether it was recently healed or no.
They ran up Ninth and took a hard left at the cathedral’s grand entrance, Dana shoving her hand deep inside her jacket and wrenching her keys free. Behind them, the sedan bounced over the sidewalk and screeched to a halt, doors slamming just as they reached the rear door to the church.
“Get inside,” Finn growled. As the keys slipped in her hands, he cursed in the same strange, guttural language he’d leveled before at their attackers. Guiding her aside and away, he slammed his shoulder once into the thick wooden door.
It crashed inward, banging off the wall.
“Inside,” he barked again, and the sound of uneven footsteps in the street behind her jarred her, shouts coming closer. “I’ll stay out here. They’ll scatter once inside the church.”
“No,” she gritted out. “I won’t leave you.”
Another burst of gunfire shattered the night. Clutching at Finn wildly, she grabbed a fistful of his jacket before falling inside the doorway, and finally, he came with her. He’d no sooner pushed the heavy wooden door closed behind them, securing it with two heavy padlocks set high in the wall since the main lock was broken, than she heard the sound of a police siren cutting through the night. Dana staggered against the wall, then painfully lurched around until her shoulder blades rested against the cool, cream-painted walls of the cathedral’s side entryway.
This wasn’t even the church proper, merely a half-lit corridor between the main church and the administrative building. But given what they’d left behind on the other side of the door, she definitely felt like she was on holy ground.
She wiped the sweat from her forehead and glared at Finn, who now stood with his back against the door. The look of ashen resolve on his face deflated her anger.
“Hey,” she managed, not recognizing her own broken voice. “You okay?”
Finn straightened. “This…isn’t the church,” he said slowly, looking around in confusion.
“Not technically, no, it’s the admin building behind the church. But…” She stared at him, lost. What’s his problem? Had he endured the same military-grade nuns she’d had in grade school? “Finn, I don’t underst—”
“Dana! What’s happened?”
Finn silently withdrew into the shadows, pressing himself back into the alcove as the robust figure of Father Leo Franks burst into the hallway.
“Father, I’m all right, really.” Dana let the tall, stoop-shouldered priest take her by the arm, glad he was distracted from Finn, who still looked shell-shocked from his brush with Christendom. Father Franks leaned down to search her face with his worried brown eyes, the flush of his skin unlike anything she’d ever seen in the normally placid, contemplative old man.
“What did they do to you?” he asked. “Why were they here?” His gray hair hung wildly around his ears, and his hand shook on her shoulder. “Should you sit? Can you sit? Your leg…”
Dana breathed out her explanation in a rush, moving deeper into the hallway and away from Finn. “I’m fine, Father, I’m so sorry to wake you. There were men out there—thugs, lunatics. I was caught off guard, walking home, and I ran. I hate to burst in on you, but I—I had nowhere else to go.”
“Of course, of course,” Father Franks said, his mournful eyes searching hers. “You were right to come.” He smoothed his black priest’s shirt, clearly shaken. Concern knifed through her.
“Father, are you—” she began, just as the priest stiffened.
“You’re not alone, are you?” he said, the words more a statement than a question.
Before Dana could speak, Father Franks turned and looked straight back at Finn, who stepped forth from the doorway’s shadows into the half-light of the hall.
To her shock, the priest’s face blanched, his eyes going wide like those of a man seeing his own death.
“God in heaven protect us,” he breathed, his words barely a whisper. “Dana, what have you brought?”
Chapter Eight
Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist
Cleveland, Ohio
2:47 a.m., Dec. 24
Finn straightened to his full height, staring down into the holy man’s outraged face. The world had gone quiet around the cathedral, waiting for the confrontation that must play out, that had to play out, when demons crossed the paths of Earth’s prophets and priests.
It had always been this way. This strangeness, this recognition by anointed mortals that he and his kind were not of this world. Fallen angels had been considered gods in ancient days. Heroes and sometimes monsters, sent from the sky. And those who’d stayed had fueled the legends of six thousand years.
Demons, of course, had occupied a far uglier position in those legends.
Only…Finn wasn’t a demon anymore. Not exactly. Though apparently, he still had enough of the demon within him to trigger the priest’s alarms.
“Good morning, Father,” he murmured. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.” No more than the truth. He had no quarrel with God’s emissaries on Earth. And he couldn’t afford to give Dana any reason to keep him from Lester.
“How dare you defile this hallowed ground,” the priest hissed back, his words quivering with intensity. Franks was a tall, rangy man with wiry gray hair that flared wildly around his ears, his slight stoop shaving a few inches off his height, and a face that looked as if it would be far more at home with easy smiles and gentle shrugs. But now the human’s gaze was flat and angry as he took another step toward Finn. “You haven’t been summoned here,” he said. “Get out.”
“Um, Father?” Dana’s cautious voice dipped between them. “What’s wrong?”
“I haven’t come to harm you,” Finn said, his voice carrying over her question. “Or her.”
“What are you talking about?” Dana’s tone sharpened, and her gaze shot back to Finn. “How do you know each other?”
Finn looked at her for a moment, deciding, then turned back to Franks. “Whoever, or whatever, you may believe I am,” he said. “Know that I am an ally.”
