“No,” Lisa said.
She stepped away from the apartment building, beyond the cracked concrete, despite that she tried not to move. “Your will is slipping,” the demon said. “You require rest. Sleep. You needn’t be bound by those needs. You shall always exist within me.”
“This is me,” Lisa said. “My body. My soul.”
“Not anymore.”
Lisa lashed out blindly, an explosion of rage and fury. “Leave!”
The demon laughed. “It’s not that easy, dear lady. You are me. I am you. You can no more rid yourself of me than you could excise an unwanted limb.”
Another step.
“You cannot stop me,” the demon said.
Another.
3.
Five minutes on the highway, Jack saw nothing in the mirrors except other headlights. He had the speedometer at 80, and figured it was best to not go so fast he drew unwanted police attention. They often ignored him, but probably not tonight. He doubted a cop would be well enough armed to stop a ghoul.
Assuming he survived, Jack decided to change the way he recorded information. Learn more about these things. I saw a ghost in the park today talking to a little girl. It was 60 degrees with a northwesterly wind, ten minute after 4 on a Friday wouldn’t cut it anymore. It was that lack of relevant information that made this sudden turn of events so dangerous. He might easily have learned that a simple lock of golden hair would stop a ghoul. Okay, maybe golden locks of hair wouldn’t be enough, but the hunter had long ago learned the usefulness of silver against vampires, so maybe every creature, regardless of strength, had a potentially simple weakness.
He watched the road ahead of him carefully, half expecting something to suddenly be standing in his path. That was another reason not to go too fast; he had to be able to stop or turn if the need arose.
He checked either side of the car, too.
That was when he noticed the motorcycle. The rider turned to him and grinned. Waved. He was misty, luminescent, matching Jack’s speed exactly. The bones beneath his skin were visible, as were white veins.
Jack gripped the steering wheel with both hands. The rider slid closer. Reaching with an impossibly thin hand, the phantom knocked on Jack’s window.
Jack stepped on the gas.
The motorcycle matched him precisely.
Jack swerved to the right lane, away from the phantom rider. The bike mimicked the move, and the phantom knocked again. Harder. Mouthed something, but at 80 mph and with the windows shut, Jack heard nothing.
Jack passed a white van. It carried a metal sliding ladder on its roof, and had the name “Paint by Walter” scrawled in blue on its side. The phantom rider drove through the van, unaffected. As Jack passed the vehicle, only the phantom’s arm was visible, still knocking on his window. The van, meanwhile, swerved suddenly to the left, brakes screeching. The motorcycle burst forward, driving as if nothing had happened.
At the last minute, Jack veered onto an off ramp. He descended a small hill, racing toward a red light. No room to stop. He glanced in the rearview mirror; the phantom rider was right behind him.
Jack drove through the light. Horns blared. A car skidded to a stop. Jack turned sharply left, tires screaming and smoking. Too far, he drove headlong into oncoming traffic, under the overpass.
Fortunately, there were only two cars; they swerved in different directions, allowing Jack’s Mustang to pass between them.
Jack turned left again, this time with the light, and sped up the on ramp that would bring him back toward downtown Orlando, as intended.
The phantom rider was right behind him. As Jack merged into traffic (moving, in this direction, substantially less than 80 miles an hour), the phantom rider took the spot alongside his passenger door. He looked, grinned again, and then turned into Jack’s lane.
Jack braced for an impact that never happened. He saw the motorcycle, part of it, where it stuck through his seat and entered his dashboard. Wind still ruffled the rider’s pants and jacket. He winked, eyelid passing over both the eye and the empty socket of his skull. “Howdy!”
Jack shifted lanes, cutting someone off, sped up, switched lanes again. The phantom rider matched every maneuver, never straying from the center of Jack’s front seat. “Just wanted to know,” the rider said, “if we’re headed in the same direction!”
“Where’s that?” Jack asked.
“South,” the rider said, “on the highway to Hell.”
Jack shifted lanes again. The hour he’d given himself was almost over. And now, riding back in the direction he’d come, he expected to see the full breadth of his pursuit.
“I’m not,” he told the rider.
“Ah, but I think you are,” the phantom said. Then he veered left, crossing through a bus and the median, to return to the eastbound lanes.
Up ahead, there was a sudden flurry of brake lights. Jack turned hard to the right, to reach an exit ramp before it was too late; he didn’t want to stop, especially when he had a good idea of the cause—maybe the ghoul, maybe something else—but at least part of his plan had been successful.
As he turned, he checked his rear view mirror. There were shapes behind him, figures, some amorphous and indistinct. But after turning, shapes loomed ahead, too—on the sidewalks, in the windows, on rooftops and in the air.
And, as if fate itself had turned against Jack Harlow, this road was a series of short blocks separated by an endless supply of red lights.
4.
Nick reached his truck without any trouble. He hadn’t expected any. He would’ve smelled a vampire if it came near. But without Jack, nothing—not even those vile beasts—would be searching for Nick Hunter.
First, he reloaded his gun and slipped extra clips into his pants. Can’t be too careful.
He loaded a second gun, one he kept under the seat. In the back of his extended cab, he unlocked a toolbox filled with silver stakes. He slid one into every available hook of his jacket. He kept the butterfly knife, but found the twin of the weapon he’d lent Lisa. He’d felt naked without it.
He sheathed the knife. He’d re-worked the inside of a regular leather jacket to hold a variety of weapons, some overlapping others. He could carry a dozen stakes and two knives inconspicuously.
He wished he had a flame thrower. First thing tomorrow, assuming all this was over and he still lived, Nick intended to find one.
He didn’t have time to walk, or run, to the interstate where Jack had asked to meet him, so he started the truck. He wasn’t sure this was a good idea; he hated to make himself too vulnerable. But he’d been fully and irreversibly exposed to this mess already.
5.
Jack drove slowly, because he had no choice, and watched every shadow and crevice he passed. He didn’t plan to stay on this road long; he didn’t feel safe with the buildings so close. Too many hiding places, too many holes and alcoves. Every movement, even the natural and innocent walk of a girl and her mother emerging from a restaurant, made Jack jump.
On his left, Jia Li’s office building loomed.
Eyes were everywhere. It was worse than last night, more densely packed. Dark’s denizens had traveled great distances, drawn to Jack. With some luck, he intended to turn their journeys into nothing more than sightseeing expeditions.
He tried not to think of the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people in this city being slaughtered by things that, if not for Jack, would have been elsewhere. The various beasts and creatures would have been doing the same on their regular turfs.
He turned right at the next street, toward the highway, a few blocks north of where he’d previously parked the Mustang. Almost immediately, space opened up on his left; there was a huge empty lot behind those office buildings. It stretched over the railroad tracks and ended in a copse of trees; beyond those was the service road and I-4.
This was where Jack wanted to wait.
If all of the night closed in on Jack Harlow, they could do so here, in the open, far from any buildings provi
ding holes for hiding, stalking, or attacking. There’d be no sneaking up on him here.
He checked his watch. He was early. He hoped Nick would arrive soon. Without weapons, he would not survive. He had only two silver stakes.
Jack parked the Mustang and strode toward the middle of that field.
It had been mostly dirt and grass; after the rain, it was now muddy and squishy. The wet ground sucked at his feet as he walked, but he wasn’t worried. Not yet.
Something dropped onto his Mustang.
He turned, pulling the stakes out.
Jia Li crouched there, two legs and one hand on the roof, leaning forward, the same position she’d taken on the desk. “Now, is that any way to greet your lover?”
“Fuckin’ hell,” Jack said.
She hopped off the car and onto the sidewalk. “You forget,” she said. “I’m not here to kill you. Oh, I know, there’s this pounding in my heart that says I should, a weight that will lift only after you die.” As she advanced, Jack stepped back, one step to her every two. “You know what I say to that, though, don’t you Jack? Fuck it. I’ve found love.”
“You don’t love me,” Jack said. “You can’t love at all. You want blood, sex, nothing more.”
She shook her head and sighed. “You don’t know what I want or feel,” she said. “But tell me, what do you feel?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Nothing.”
“I thought we had something,” Jia Li said. “A connection. Physical, at least. You love me, too, don’t you?”
“You fucked with my head,” Jack said.
“Not malevolently.” She was close enough now to stab.
Tenderly, she touched his cheek. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“Step away.” Nick had arrived.
Jack turned. The hunter stood on the edge of the field. He’d pulled his truck into the dirt, and stood next to its open door with his gun aimed across Jack at Jia Li.
“Don’t,” Jack said.
Nick did not lower his gun.
“Don’t,” Jack said again, lowering his head. “We’ll need all the friends we can.”
“She’s no friend.”
“But I am,” Jia Li said, whispering in Jack’s ear. “I swear it. I fought for you before. Remember the water elemental. I’ll do it again.”
“I . . .” Jack hesitated. He had to say it, though, because it was true (albeit, artificial, probably implanted by the vampire herself). “I trust her.”
Gun raised, Nick walked slowly toward them. “Why?”
“She could’ve killed me before,” Jack said. “She didn’t.”
“What did she do?”
Jia Li purred, low enough so only Jack would hear.
“She vowed to protect me.”
“Why?” Nick asked.
“Love,” Jia Li said.
“Love?” Nick asked. “You’re a vampire. You have no love.”
“Fuck you,” she said. “It gets tiresome, constantly hearing what I do and don’t feel. You’ve never been like I am.”
“I’d kill myself first,” Nick said.
“The Hell you would,” Jia Li said. “I was every bit as mortal as you, once. The will to live is strong. You’ll come back after you die, in one form or another, whether you want to or not. You’re the type.”
Nick’s eyes widened. Jack remained between them.
“You’re so strong-willed, so full of zeal for life, you’ll refuse death no matter how it comes,” Jia Li said, “and you’ll certainly never take your own life. Your desire to live is too strong.”
“I haven’t lived,” Nick said, trembling now, “not since your damned kind came and destroyed everything I knew and loved.”
“You’re transparent,” Jia Li said. “You’ve taken that love and replaced it with a weak need for vengeance. You think, if I can kill just one more, maybe that will even the sides.”
“It helps,” Nick said.
“It doesn’t help anyone,” she said. “Least of all, you. Look at yourself. Really. You live to hunt. I can smell it on you. You don’t even believe in it anymore. You never truly learned to hunt. You pick off the weak like a bully, and you think you enjoy it.”
“You’re not weak,” Nick said, steadying his gun.
“No,” Jia Li said. “I’m not.”
“I’m still here,” Jack reminded them.
A moment passed, another, in which neither moved; then more long moments until finally, after what felt like hours, Nick lowered his arm.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
1.
Lisa Sparrow held on to herself in every way she could. The demon pushed and pulled, stretched and crushed. It forced her, one step at a time, toward Lake Eola, in the direction of the compulsion: Jack. It was impossible to ignore; the pull, and the bloodlust, nearly overwhelmed her.
“I won’t let you kill him,” she said.
“You cannot stop me,” the demon said. “Nor do you really wish to. You feel the urge, too. You know its purpose.”
“No.”
“Give in to it. To me. You can relax. Eternity will be easier on you if you relax.”
“No.”
She fought for every ounce of control. She couldn’t stop him from moving her legs (demon legs, how could those be hers?), so she altered their direction. Pushed one leg too far forward, so they fell.
“You’re half way there,” the demon said. “It can be so much easier.”
“Never,” Lisa said.
“Again?” the demon asked, taking another step toward the lake.
Lisa pushed in the other direction, toward the street, and again she (the demon’s body) staggered. “Let me have you!” the demon screamed, a voice only in her mind but full of anger and frustration. She refused. Didn’t bother saying it this time. She steeled herself against the thunderous voice, the hellish images of its realm, the external pressure to find and kill.
The internal pressure, the weight of the demon, alleviated. Just for a moment. Lisa seized the opportunity, turned their body completely around and away from the lake, and pushed her way back into her own head (a demon’s head, not hers, but it was—and would be again).
“Rats. You liked them didn’t you?”
She didn’t answer.
But through her demon eyes, she saw the rodents. Whiskers twitched. Eyes glowed red. Maybe five, at first, then ten, then twenty—they poured in from everywhere, the underbrush, the garbage cans alongside the building, sewer gratings.
“They can be like friends,” the demon said, its voice much calmer now. “The kind who listen and obey.”
They swarmed around her, gripping her flesh with their tiny claws and climbing her (demonic) body. She swiped one away. Tried to swipe another, but the demon shifted the direction of her hand.
“What you can do, I can do,” the demon said.
Rats scaled her back and chest. The first bite was under the ribcage. The second, the back of her shoulder. The nape of her neck. Her thigh.
“I can make them go away,” the demon said.
“They’re biting you, too,” Lisa said.
“Yes, but I’ve suffered millennia of torture. How long can you withstand it?”
They bit her arm, her nipple (no, not on her breast—those were gone—but still her nipple in the middle of her broad, crimson chest). Tiny sharp teeth ripped and chewed. She stumbled to one knee, crushing three rats beneath her, giving her calf to another half dozen for munching.
She managed to shake one off her shoulder. Another clung to her face, scampered across her cheek, and gnawed on her nose.
Despite her wishes, she was on her feet again, walking now—no, striding. As she brushed the rats away, the demon controlled their legs.
“You cannot win,” the demon said. A scarlet tide surged over her mind, severing her miniscule controls, shattering her thoughts, fragmenting her essence.
The demon grinned, outwardly. The rats ceased biting and perched. He cast a red glow, a hideous sulfur
ic smog, around himself.
“No!” Lisa cried, but too late. The demon had wrested control of her limbs; whatever spell he cast, she couldn’t stop it.
When the smoke cleared, the demon (and Lisa) were at the edge of a field, two hundred yards or more from Jack Harlow, the hunter, and the vampire.
Two hundred yards. She wanted to crawl across every inch and tear the watcher—her lover—into pieces too small to recognize. She wanted to consume him, one limb at a time, and crush him, smash him, spray him across the night.
“I can expel those desires,” the demon whispered, “by fulfilling them.”
2.
Nick Hunter turned his attention to Jack. Ignoring the vampire was difficult—would have been, even if she’d been human. “You just want to stand here while the dark unleashes everything at its disposal and see how long you can last?”
“Basically,” Jack said.
“You know, that’s crazy.”
“I know.”
“I’m crazy to stay,” Nick said.
“You don’t have to,” Jack said. “But if you go, I’m hoping you’ll at least leave me some weapons.”
Nick flipped the gun in his hand and offered it to Jack—and also the butterfly knife with its silver blade.
Jack took the weapons and nodded.
Nick pulled his other gun out of his jacket. “What are we expecting?” he asked, looking beyond Jack and Jia Li. He saw nothing, yet, on the field, though shapes were visible atop the distant roofs. A dog—wolf?—howled in the distance.
“We shouldn’t have to worry about ghosts,” Jack said. “I haven’t seen many with any substance.”
Closer, in the wet grass and dirt, Nick saw insects, worms, and rodents. Squirming. Wriggling. Watching.
“Anything else, it’s open,” Jack said. “After the past couple of days, I know I don’t know everything.”
“Moon’s full tonight,” Jia Li said, “even if we can’t see it.”
“Werewolves?” Nick asked.
Jack nodded. “Possibly.”
“What about things we can’t kill?” Nick asked. “Like that wraith.”
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