Summoned to Thirteenth Grave

by Darynda Jones

  Her shoulders sagged in disappointment. “Yes. That one was the normal spelling, but I looked it up. Around the same time that Merry went missing, a man named Mark was stabbed to death outside a convenience store in Gallup.”

  “Okay.”

  “So I ask this guy what he does.” She grabbed my shoulders and turned me to face her, garnering my full attention. “You’re not going to believe this.”

  Suspense hung thick in the air. I held back a grin and raised my brows in anticipation.

  “Charley, he’s a truck driver!”

  A long, drawn-out silence filled the air, and I blinked a few times as I let her revelation sink in.

  She shook my shoulders, possibly causing permanent brain damage. “Don’t you get it? He’s a serial killer truck driver. He must kill people while he’s on the road. At truck stops and stuff.”

  “Oh, of course. That truck driver.”

  “And who knows what he’s done with Merry. Poor girl. She’s probably in a shallow grave somewhere.”

  “Do you have a name?”

  “Merry Schipplet.”

  “No, his name.”

  “Only a first name. He paid in cash. I was so hoping he’d come in tonight. I wanted to get some pictures. Look up other names he’d carved into his flesh.”

  “Pari,” I said, giving her my best frown of disapproval. “That’s dangerous. What if he really is a killer?”

  “Oh, yeah.” She sat on the bed. “I didn’t think of that. I just wanted proof.”

  “I’ll get Cookie on it. You stay away from him, understand?”

  She shrugged and toed a shoe on the floor. “I guess.”

  “Okay. In the meantime, can I please see your ass?”

  * * *

  One more stop and then we were so out of there. Pari sat in the backseat with Gemma, only a little cramped. Misery’s backseat wasn’t the most comfortable in the land, but it got people from point A to point B.

  “Why are we going to the hospital again?” Gemma asked.

  “Reyes and I are going to go in and check out the infected patients.”

  “Do you think that’s wise?” Pari asked.

  “We’ll know soon enough. We need to see them for ourselves. This could all be connected to the hell dimension.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Pari said, “the one you opened.”

  “Yes.” I cleared my throat. “The one we opened.”

  “Twenty-twenty hindsight, yeah?”

  “We didn’t actually mean to open it, Pari. It just kind of—” I startled when, for the third time since we’d left Pari’s shop, a swish of charcoal blurred across Misery’s hood.

  Reyes’s hands gripped the steering wheel tighter.

  “Is it my light?”

  “Like moths to a flame,” he confirmed. “I’m surprised it took them this long.”

  “The demons from hell, from Lucifer’s hell, can’t be touched by light without bursting into flames. What’s up with these guys?”

  “Remember the part about me creating the hell for you specifically?”

  I pressed my lips together and nodded. “Right. You’d have to create something that wasn’t affected by it.”

  “I guess I succeeded.”

  We pulled into the emergency room drive-through. “In and out,” he said before looking at our passengers. “Don’t move.”

  “Aye, aye, handsome.” Pari saluted to emphasize her ability to follow orders.

  He gave her a flirtatious wink.

  We started to get out, but I turned back to them. “And, you know, just in case they’re attracted to sound, be as quiet as you can.”

  “Great,” Gemma said, fear evident in every line on her face.

  “We’ll be right back.”

  We left Misery running and jumped out, figuring it wouldn’t take long to determine if the infection was indeed supernatural. We were right. The moment we walked in to the urgent care waiting area, we saw them. At least a dozen patients sat in various states of mania. Some pulled at their own hair or chewed on their nails. Others sat curled into themselves, afraid of their own shadows as their loved ones tried to soothe them. Two others fought while hospital staff attempted to restrain them.

  Another victim was brought in by ambulance as we stood there, which was odd because the ambulance entrance was on the other side of the building. That entrance must have been jammed up. The entire hospital staff was running on fumes, and people just kept coming in.

  But each and every victim had one thing in common. They were playing host to a nasty Shade demon, their powdery gray bodies shuddering inside the humans they had inhabited. I covered my mouth with both hands, wanting so much to help them.

  The woman on the stretcher was in the middle of a seizure when the EMTs brought her through. She had handfuls of her own hair twisted in her fingers, and her face and arms were covered in scratches and cuts. While the demons in most of the infected were docile and barely moving, the demon in this woman was scratching and clawing at her as though it were trying to get out. It bit her, its bare teeth sinking into her flesh.

  “We have to stop it,” I said, rushing toward her.

  Reyes held me back. “They’re trying to cross,” he said, astonished.

  “What?”

  “They’re trying to cross onto the earthly plane. To escape their own dimension and enter this one through a human host.”

  I didn’t know why I was so shocked. That was exactly how both Reyes and I entered the earthly plane. To gain access, we were born onto the plane through a human host. But we were the people we were conceived to be. We didn’t take a human life to make room for ours. These demons, these monsters, were taking human lives to try to enter this realm.

  I faced Reyes, glowering at him. “We have to try to stop it. We have to try.”

  He nodded. “You’re right. We need a distraction.”

  Two minutes later, Pari was seizing on the floor inside the ER, God love her. Reyes and I took advantage, easing closer to the woman. They’d sedated her, but the drug didn’t affect the demon in the least. He was still trying to claw his way out while the woman lay helpless, being fed upon from an invisible parasite.

  I took her hand. The demon was close, and it knew it. Like a shark in the middle of a feeding frenzy, it bit and wriggled and tried to break free.

  Without the ability to shift, to dematerialize, we could do nothing but watch. The woman arched her back and began to seize again. Reyes straddled her on the gurney, put his hand on her chest, and waited. If it even thought about emerging onto this plane, he could grab it.

  “Hey!” a man shouted from behind us.

  I brought her hand to my mouth as Reyes waited. The woman convulsed, her arms and legs thrashing, as her eyes rolled back until only the whites shown through.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” the man said.

  I turned. It was one of the EMTs. He grabbed Reyes and fought to pull him off the woman.

  Reyes, almost trancelike himself, pushed the man away, tossing him twenty feet into another EMT who was coming to aid his friend.

  In the next instant, the woman went limp and the demon broke free. It lunged at Reyes, knocking him to the ground. It was twice the size of a large man and supernaturally strong.

  While it fought, its bones cracked, breaking and mending, then breaking again, as though it were growing, adjusting to its new environment. All the while, it attacked Reyes with the ferocity of a cornered animal.

  It swiped at him, ripping into the flesh at his abdomen. Reyes hardly noticed the blood gushing forth from his T-shirt. He landed a right hook, but the demon was fast. It recovered from the punch and clamped its teeth down on Reyes’s arm.

  I didn’t know what the others could and could not see, but I slowed time to keep the hospital staff at bay and jumped on the back of the entity. An icy chill swept over me as I tried to get an arm around its neck.

  It shrugged me off with ease, then turned toward me and tilted its head as tho
ugh curious. I stumbled but caught my balance and stared back.

  A dull gray from head to toe, the Shade demon had only a mouth on its face, its cracked, chalky lips pulled back to reveal a set of thick, square teeth. The kind that could tear through flesh and grind bones to dust with little effort. A crown of gray bone sat atop its head, the protrusion the same hard material as the rest of its brittle face.

  I knew my light wouldn’t work on it, and I didn’t think for a moment I could fight it, but maybe my guardian could. As the demon straightened to its full height in front of me, I sank to my knees, lowered my palm to the floor, and summoned her.

  Artemis, a gorgeous Rottweiler who’d been my official guardian since she’d died, rose out of the ground, and relief washed over me. Unlike Reyes and me, apparently those who were already departed could materialize inside the Shade. Thank Jehovahn for small favors.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Artemis leaped forward and attacked the demon, her snarls vicious, her growls the stuff of nightmares.

  She went for the throat, ripping and tearing at the being, and though I quickly realized she wouldn’t be able to take it alone, the distraction gave Reyes enough time to position himself behind it.

  When the demon’s claws closed around Artemis’s neck, I said in a whisper-soft voice, “Come.”

  She released the demon immediately and dematerialized. Just as she slipped through its grip, Reyes wrapped his arms around the being’s head and twisted. He broke its neck. He twisted again, his muscles straining with effort, and pulled the head clean off the body, killing it.

  Before I could wonder how we were going to dispose of the body of a Shade demon, it disintegrated into dust. Time began to take hold around us as we watched the demon crumble and turn into powder. A powder that only we could see, apparently.

  Hospital staff rushed toward us in slow motion. I ignored them and walked to the woman. She was dead, her eyes lifeless, staring into nothing.

  I reached out to her, and Reyes grabbed my arm so hard, he nearly ripped it out of its socket. I glared up at him.

  “Don’t you dare,” he said, his grip like a vise, his voice razor sharp.

  Then what I was about to do hit me. “I wasn’t—”

  He closed the distance between us and said in a low tone, “I know exactly what you were doing. Her soul has already left her body.”

  Which meant I would have been exiled again. Cast off the plane again.

  Time reset itself. The world crashed back into us.

  I jerked out of his grip, ignoring the two men ordering us out. “Is that how they cross?” I asked Reyes, incredulous. “They kill the host and somehow get onto this plane?”

  He offered me a barely perceptible nod. “Yes. They piggyback onto the host’s soul.”

  We both scanned the area as three rather large security guards met us in the waiting room. They’d called the police, and they were going to hold us there. But we were much more interested in the throngs of people crowded into every available space, each with a nifty Shade demon tucked safely inside.

  Artemis’s hair stood on end. She growled at the plethora of demons, her very favorite thing to kill, but I kept her from attacking with a wave of my hand. I didn’t know what would happen if she did her usual and dragged the demon out of the host. Would that kill the human? Or had the demon killed it when he fought to get out?

  Either way, this had to end. “Reyes, we have to stop this.”

  “I know.”

  “And we have to—”

  “I know.”

  “But first—” I gestured to our armed escort.

  He nodded, and a microsecond later, they crumpled to the floor, all three of them, as though they’d fainted. He hadn’t even looked back at them. We kept walking as nonchalantly as possible and found Pari sitting in a chair with a nurse close by.

  “I’m feeling much better,” she said when she saw us.

  The woman had every intention of arguing, but she didn’t get a chance. Reyes knocked her out, too, and caught her as she fell gracefully to the floor.

  “You’re going to have to show me how you do that one of these days,” I said to him.

  Pari hurried over to us. “Well?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  She wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “I’m sorry, Chuck. Did you figure out what’s causing all this?”

  “Yes,” Reyes said.

  Pari gasped when her gaze landed on his abdomen.

  I was right there with her.

  “You’re gods,” she said, appalled. “I thought you couldn’t be killed.”

  “We can’t,” I said with a grimace. “Doesn’t mean we can’t be shredded and eaten alive.”

  “Oh. Great. Good to know.”

  “We have an audience.” Reyes gestured to his right.

  There, hovering in the shadows, stood five Shade demons.

  I tripped on my own feet and sucked in a soft breath of air. Reyes took my arm and kept us moving forward while Artemis let out another guttural growl.

  Their skeletal hands were folded at their chests, their heads bowed, and yet they were looking directly at us. Even though they didn’t have eyes, we could tell they were looking right at us. And they were miffed. We’d killed one of their own.

  As we walked past, their heads pivoted in unison, watching our every move. Just like before, their movements were synchronized as though each motion were choreographed.

  “Pari,” I whispered to her, “can you see them?”

  She looked to the side. “I can see a gray mist, just like any other ghost.”

  Thank God for small favors. If that was all Pari could see, then the regular joe would see nothing at all.

  “Is that one of them?” she asked in alarm.

  “No. That’s five of them, and they’ve already crossed onto this plane.”

  A group of hospital staff hurried past us to check on all the unconscious employees while we made our getaway. I’d grabbed a blanket off a gurney. As Reyes shifted Misery into drive, I pressed it to his abdomen. He almost argued with me, but I scowled, so he took my hand into his instead and helped me hold it.

  We drove home in silence. Stunned silence. If just one of the Shade demons could best Reyes, a.k.a. the god Rey’azikeen, what chance did we have of stopping an entire dimension of them?

  6

  I need something that’s more than coffee but less than cocaine.

  —MEME

  I showed Gemma to a room when we got back so she could freshen up. She was still shaking from all the excitement.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” I asked as she peeled off her jacket.

  We sat on the cot together, mostly because there was nowhere else to sit in these rooms. Reyes had supplied them with the bare essentials, a temporary headquarters, so to speak. And it would definitely be temporary if Reyes’s calculations of a three-day time limit came to fruition.

  Which, how bad did that suck? I’d considered seeing his three days and raising him five. I mean, look what God did with six days. Surely we could destroy what Reyes had created with eight spins of the globe on our side.

  Were we actually facing an apocalypse? Would it come to that? When imagining a zombie apocalypse, I’d always been one of the survivors. I supposed most people thought of themselves that way. The alternative was death. Or worse, zombie hair. Nobody wanted that.

  Gemma settled onto the cot and shrugged a delicate shoulder, the tips of her blond hair brushing across it. One of her crystalline blue eyes had been blackened in the attack, and she had several scratches across one cheek. I tamped down the ache in my heart for what she’d gone through. Now was not the time.

  “Carolyn came in for her weekly appointment,” she began, her gaze drifting into the memory, “but she seemed upset. Agitated. Carolyn’s the sweetest woman I’ve ever met. She had a ton of issues, but who doesn’t? I told her she was a little early and went to my office to hang up my jacket when she began screaming and
tackled me to the ground. It was so out of the blue.” She pressed her fingernails into the palms of her hands, something she’d always done when she was upset.

  I rubbed her back. “I’m sorry, hon.”

  “No, I was just … I hadn’t seen any of the infected. I didn’t suspect a thing.” She dropped her gaze, her posture deflating. “I’m so dumb, Charley. That poor woman, and I didn’t realize she was sick. She needed my help.”

  “You’re not dumb.”

  “No?” She stood and began pacing. “You would have known. You’re so good at this stuff. I’m supposed to be the professional, yet you were always so much better with people than I was. You could read them so fully.”

  I giggled. “Gem, I can read people because I can literally feel the emotions coursing through them. I cheat. I’m a cheater,” I added when my words failed to assuage her doubts. “And a pumpkin eater.”

  She finally stopped pacing and let her mouth widen across her face. She was so beautiful. Unlike me, she could have been a model or an actress or a porn star. Well, I could’ve been a porn star, too, but she chose to help people when she didn’t have to.

  I’d had little say in my destiny. Not that I would’ve changed it for the world. If not for my celestial baggage, I wouldn’t have Reyes or Beep or Artemis or Angel or any of the other peripherals in my crazy, wonderful life.

  “I blacked out,” she said, sitting beside me again. “I don’t even know how she died.”

  Sadness squeezed my heart again. “I think I do, but that’s not what matters now. She’s at peace.”

  Gemma nodded, then cleared her throat as though bracing herself for what she was about to say. She drew in a deep breath and said, “I’m so sorry, Charley.”

  “For the night you cut the feet out of my footie pajamas and I almost lost my toes to frostbite?” I’d never gotten over that.

  She laughed softly. “First, it was the middle of August, and second, you’d grown out of them. They were strangling you. But no. I’m sorry for running out on you last time. I was trying to become more involved in your life, in what you do every day, and I chickened out and ran.”

  I blinked, surprised by her need to apologize. “Gem, you have nothing to be sorry for. My world is not for the faint of heart, and you’ve been forced to be a part of it your whole life. I don’t blame you one bit for wanting to get away from it all.”