Soultaker

by Bryan Smith

  Brown’s thumb froze on the radio’s talk button.

  “Listen to me carefully, Brown.”

  Brown’s jowls trembled as he swallowed a lump in his throat. His face reddened. A sudden sheen of sweat glistened at his brow. He managed a single terse nod. “Okay.”

  “Put the radio back on your belt.”

  Brown did as ordered. More sweat rolled off him. His face flushed a deeper shade of scarlet. The poor man had to be scared out of his wits. In all his years on the job—and he’d been at Rockville longer than Raymond—he’d probably never had a gun aimed at him. He looked like he was about to have a heart attack. Raymond couldn’t have the man collapsing out here in the open. And he couldn’t allow himself to feel sympathy for him. He was just a man doing his job. But it didn’t matter. He was in the way.

  “Open the door behind me. Get in the back.”

  Brown’s lower lip trembled. “You’re not going to…kill me…are you?”

  Raymond forced another of those fake smiles, hoping this one would be more convincing than the last. “Of course not. I just need to talk to you. I need your help, Brown. I’m not here to commit a crime. I’m here to stop one.”

  Brown still didn’t look convinced, but he was too frightened to do anything other than what he’d been told. Raymond tracked him with the barrel of the Glock as he reached for the door behind Raymond, opened it, and slung his considerable weight inside. The Jaguar bounced slightly as his butt hit the seat.

  Raymond twisted in his seat and aimed the gun through the gap between the front seats. “Close that door.”

  Brown stared at the gun. The door stayed open. He looked at Raymond. “You can’t stop her.”

  Raymond sighed.

  Until now he’d harbored a small shred of hope. Hope that he could convince Brown of the threat facing Rockville’s students. That he could talk the man into helping him put a stop to it. But she’d gotten to him first, and probably long ago. It was a smart move on her part. Probably every member of the security staff had been corrupted. It would make things harder than he’d already expected.

  “I’m sorry, Brown.”

  He leaned through the gap between the seats and plunged the Glock’s barrel deep into the man’s big belly. Terror spurred Brown into action. A meaty fist arced toward Raymond’s head, made contact with his jaw at the same instant his finger squeezed the trigger. The blow sent him crashing against the dashboard. His head wobbled and the gun slipped from his fingers, landing on the Mossberg box. Everything went gray for a few moments. Panic gripped him when everything snapped back into focus.

  He groped for the fallen Glock.

  He had to stop Brown before he could raise the alarm.

  But Brown wasn’t going anywhere. He was dead, his body slumped forward on the backseat. Blood leaked from the hole in his gut. Raymond glanced around, expecting to see other members of the security staff bearing down on the Jag. But there was no one in sight. He hoped Brown’s soft belly had muffled the sound of the blast. Maybe it had. His ears were ringing, but that could be attributed to having his bell rung by Carter Brown as the man’s last mortal act.

  A renewed sense of urgency got him moving again.

  He could hear the seconds ticking away in his head again, loud and resonant like the ticking of an old grandfather clock.

  He reached between the seats and shoved Brown’s corpse aside, then crawled into the back and pulled the door shut. He didn’t spare the body a glance as he returned to the front seat. Three people had died today at his hands, either directly or, in the case of Cindy Wells, indirectly.

  He chose to think of these deaths as necessary sacrifices.

  God’s way of steeling him for the greater violence to come.

  He started the Jaguar, put the car in gear, and headed toward the other side of the school.

  It was 12:30.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  It was 12:45.

  Or maybe 12:49.

  The Camry’s digital dashboard clock made it difficult to tell. One of the little LED filaments had given up the ghost some time ago. Five could be nine nine. Eight could be six. Numbers like three or four weren’t a problem. It was easy to connect the digital dots, so to speak. But with the problem numbers the only thing you could do was wait another minute to see which way the little glowing bars would rearrange themselves. The necessary time passed while the others piled into the Camry.

  Jake watched the clock as he put the car in gear and backed out of Stu Walker’s driveway.

  The clock moved forward a minute.

  12:50.

  Damn.

  Jake changed gears again and hit the gas. The Camry sped down the narrow residential street. But this was not a time for caution. The situation was urgent. This he’d realized after only a few additional minutes of conversation with the kids back in Stu’s kitchen.

  They were with him now, bunched together in the back.

  Jordan, Kelsey, and Will.

  Kristen sat next to him, riding shotgun. He almost laughed at that. He wished she did have a shotgun nestled in her lap. Their only weapons were handguns. The Glocks the boys were carrying and Stu’s .38. Kristen had retrieved it from a closet shelf in Stu’s bedroom. It looked like a cannon clutched in Kristen’s smallish hands. Looking at her, he wished again she’d stayed behind, but she’d been adamant about accompanying him, and there’d been no time to argue.

  He slowed down at a three-way stop. A quick scan in either direction revealed no oncoming traffic, so he executed a quick right turn without coming to a full stop.

  He straightened the car out and looked at the clock again.

  12:51.

  That sense of urgency intensified. Time seemed to be moving faster. He imagined the hands of a clock moving in a fast-forward circle, minutes falling away like seconds. No. Faster. Like tiny fractions of a second. The thought roused the paranoiac within him. He’d seen things that challenged his concepts of reality. He thought again of Lamia and what these kids swore she could do. Things he no longer had any reason to doubt. And if she could do those things, was it possible that she could speed up time, or at least somehow alter the way they perceived the passage of time?

  No.

  He was willing to believe a lot. She was a demon. Okay. She had powers. The ability to bend people to her will by reaching into their minds. She was strong. Powerful. Almost inconceivably ancient. But even a demon would not have the power to alter the rules of time and space. He had to calm down and concentrate on the reality of the situation. Focus on what he knew and what he could do. A surrender to irrational panic would only serve to further Lamia’s goals.

  He made another hairpin turn and checked the rearview mirror. The kids looked as if they were nearly as afraid of his daredevil driving as they were of the demon. Their faces were ashen, their eyes wide. Jordan sat between the boys. Her hands clutched the edge of the seat between her legs. She was holding on for dear life. And she looked not at all like a person capable of levitating a human being merely by concentrating.

  “Kelsey!”

  The taller of the two boys flinched at the sound of his name. He looked at Jake’s reflected eyes. “Yeah?”

  “Tell me again about your idea.”

  “I’m not sure it’ll work. It was just something I read in a book on ancient mythology. Could be just a lot of ancient bullshit.”

  They were out of Washington Heights now and headed down a wider avenue. Traffic heading into town was thicker than he would have imagined for this time of day and so he was forced to slow down. He resisted the almost overpowering temptation to weave recklessly through the tiny gaps in traffic. With his luck, they’d sideswipe an SUV or Hummer and crash, go down in an inglorious blaze. Or worse, a cop would try to pull them over. He shuddered at the possibility. There were so many ways an encounter with the police could lead to unmitigated disaster. He had two armed fugitives in his car. He could be arrested as an accomplice or accessory. Or the cop might turn out
to be loyal to Lamia. Guns would be drawn. There would be shooting. Death. Maybe even his own.

  Shit.

  He glanced at the rearview mirror again. “That might be true, Kelsey. But we’re gonna have to roll the dice here. We’re damn near out of time and options. So tell us again what the book said.”

  Kelsey shifted in his seat and shot an uncertain glance at Will. “The book says you can’t kill a demon. They’re immortal. There’s nothing we can do about that.” He paused as he glanced at Will again. The other boy nodded and Kelsey continued: “The only way to get rid of the bitch is a banishment spell. It would expel her from the mortal realm. Maybe send her to hell or some other dimension, fuck, I don’t know. The book wasn’t real clear on that part.”

  Will said, “Somewhere else anyway.”

  Jake waited for a Mazda to ease past him and did a quick lane change; then his eyes went back to the mirror. “Sounds good. I don’t care where she goes, so long as she’s gone from here.”

  Kelsey cleared his throat. “Um…there is a bit of a catch.”

  Jake tensed. He’d figured there would be a catch. He’d hoped he was wrong about that. Hell. He was always right about things on the negative side of the scale. “Spill it.”

  Kelsey’s jaw tightened. He didn’t want to say it, but forced the words out anyway: “It would require a…blood sacrifice.”

  Kristen’s head snapped toward Jake. He looked at her and was startled by the change in her. She’d said nothing since leaving the house, had just sat there staring straight ahead, looking numb and zoned out. But now she looked alert and anxious. She still didn’t say anything, but her eyes conveyed a warning of some kind. A silent rebuke. But why? It was strange but he couldn’t worry about it right now.

  He glanced over his shoulder at Kelsey. “A blood sacrifice? Would that be like a voodoo thing, with an animal?”

  Kelsey grimaced. “No. It has to be a human sacrifice.”

  Jake laughed and shook his head. “Well, of fucking course it does. We wouldn’t get off that easy. Any other insane requirements for this barbaric ancient ritual? I understand those long-ago jackasses were big on sacrificing virgins. Usually young female virgins.” He laughed again as he made another lane change, sliding in behind an old but immaculate Lincoln Continental with a single, incongruous sticker on its bumper: LET YOUR FREAK FLAG FLY! “Because I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think we’re gonna have a problem locating one of those within an hour.”

  “Book didn’t say anything about virgins or the sex of the victim, just that it has to be human.”

  “Great. Chalk up one for our side, I guess.” Jake drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. He was feeling more anxious by the moment. There was so much they didn’t know. So many things they were probably overlooking. The drumming rhythm intensified as he tried to kick his mind into gear. Then he thought of something. “Say…where is that book now?”

  “Um…”

  “Spit it out.”

  “Well…” Kelsey sighed. “It’s back there.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “In the Oldsmobile. We left in such a hurry…”

  Jake groaned. “Right. Of course.” He’d insisted on leaving the Olds behind. The police were looking for it, after all. See? Here was one of those overlooked things. A potentially fatal miscalculation. “And I suppose the book has info we need to do this thing up right?”

  Kelsey shifted in his seat again. “The book lays out the whole ritual for performing a banishment spell. How to perform the sacrifice. With a knife, by the way. There are chants the person performing the sacrifice has to, uh, chant.”

  “The chants are in the book?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jake ceased drumming the steering wheel and wrapped his fingers tight around the hard plastic. “We need that fucking book.”

  Jordan leaned forward, poked her head between the seats. “We don’t have time to go back. We do that, the Harvest will begin without us. We’ll be too late.”

  Jake glanced at the clock.

  Almost 1:00.

  Kelsey had risked sending a text message to one of his friends, a fellow student at Rockville High he was sure he could trust. The friend verified that a special assembly had been called for two P.M. If Will’s mother had told him the truth—and there was no reason to doubt she had—this would be when Lamia would initiate her Harvest of Souls. Jordan was right. Going back for the book at this point was out of the question.

  Now Kelsey leaned forward and Jordan retreated. “She’s right. But there’s a Barnes & Noble on the way, at a strip mall right off the street. It’s a long shot, but they might have another copy there.”

  Kristen said, “We are not performing any goddamned blood sacrifice.”

  Jake ignored the comment. He knew she was on edge. Brittle. She might fall apart any moment. Getting into an argument with her would be counterproductive. To understate.

  He looked at Kelsey. “Right. We make a pit stop at Barnes & Noble. Think. Is there anything else we need before we get to the school?”

  “Just a knife.”

  “I’ve got an old switchblade in the glove box. Will that do?”

  “I guess it’ll have to.”

  “Did you hear what I fucking said?” Kristen’s eyes flashed as she leaned toward Jake. Her nostrils flared. There was a harsher, more emphatic edge in her voice now. A tone indicating no tolerance for disagreement. “We’re not doing this. Are you stupid? Who are you thinking of sacrificing anyway?”

  Jake looked at her. He hesitated. He knew what he needed to say would only incense her further. But there was just no way around it. He’d intuited the only solution the moment Kelsey told him the victim only needed to be human. And it sucked. It really did. He didn’t particularly want to die. He made his expression as sober as he could and said, “It has to be me.”

  “What!?”

  Kristen’s scream reverberated in the car.

  Jake cringed and looked away from her. “It’s the only way.”

  “Bullshit it is!” Kristen leaned closer and grabbed a handful of his shirt. “You’re all I’ve got left. I won’t let you do this.”

  Jake peeled her hand away and smoothed his shirt. “What do you propose we do, then? Just let all those kids die?”

  “Fuck them.”

  Jake gaped at her. “Kristen—”

  “I mean it. They’re nothing to me.” She glanced at the kids in the back. “Them, too. I don’t care what happens to them. We should just drop them off and skip town. You said you’d take me back to Minnesota with you, remember?”

  Jake put a hand to his temple. Her ranting was making his head hurt. He’d known his impulsive offer to take her with him when he left might come back to haunt him, but he hadn’t expected it to happen so soon. “We can’t do that. Think about what you’re saying, Kristen. One of those kids you don’t give a shit about is Trey. I understand that you’re upset. This on the heels of what happened to your brother has to be almost too much to bear. But—”

  “ALMOST!?”

  Her voice rose to screech level now, felt like a knife going through his skull.

  She went on: “And as for your precious brother, he didn’t seem too interested in your help this morning. He hit you, remember? So, yeah, fuck him, too.”

  Jordan made a sound of disgust. “Could you please shut the fuck up? And by the way, I don’t care what happens to you either, bitch.”

  Jake’s stomach began to knot up. He could feel the situation spinning out of control, and didn’t have the first clue what to do about it.

  Kristen twisted in her seat and aimed Stu’s .38 at Jordan’s midsection. “Talk to me like that again and I’ll shoot you. You do not want to fuck with me.”

  Jordan sneered. “Right. I’m half demon, remember? What could your bullets do to me?”

  “I don’t know, bitch. Maybe I should pumps six rounds straight into your face and find out.”

  Jake’s hands were shaking on the steer
ing wheel. He’d sensed before that Kristen harbored a fearsome temper. That it could be so…overwhelming, though, came as a revelation. He recalled what she’d said about her boyfriend kicking her out for unspecified transgressions and knew he should have headed off any sort of relationship with her in that moment.

  Hindsight, as always, was a motherfucker.

  He braced a hand on Kristen’s shoulder and shoved her back into her seat. She gasped in surprise and glared at him.

  Jordan laughed. “Oooh. Boyfriend lays the smack down.”

  Kristen screamed again and lunged toward the gap between the seats.

  Jake shoved her back again and said, “STOP!” He glanced at the rearview mirror, sought Jordan’s eyes and found them. “That goes for both of you. Knock it the fuck off.”

  There was a lull in the battle then. Kristen sat panting in the front seat. That and the thrum of traffic around them were the only sounds for more than a minute.

  Then Jake relaxed his grip on the steering wheel and exhaled a long breath. “I’ve made up my mind, Kristen. This has to be done. There’s no one else. I’m sure as hell not asking one of these kids to take my place. I told you before to stay home, but you didn’t listen. If you want, I can drop you off at the bookstore. You could call a taxi to take you home.”

  Kristen looked at him. She was outwardly calmer now, her expression smooth and unreadable. But a glint in her eyes hinted a still-raging storm within. “No. You’re stuck with me.”

  “Even if it means watching me die?”

  Kristen didn’t say anything, just stared at him.

  Kelsey said, “Hey, there’s that mall.”

  Jake saw the strip mall coming up on the right. The Barnes & Noble looked to be the main attraction here, dominating the center of the retail space. He flicked on the blinker, switched lanes, and slowed down as they neared the parking lot. The lot was crowded, so he pulled to a stop outside the store’s entrance and fished his wallet out of his back pocket. He extracted a fifty-dollar bill and passed it back to Kelsey.