by J. S. Bailey
Uncertainty prodded at her. If this house was a waystation where human traffickers imprisoned women, shouldn’t there have been better security?
Unless Bobby had been wrong about where his mother was being kept.
Or maybe the dogs had been the extent of the house’s security system.
Carly said a quick prayer and stepped over the threshold into a dim room that smelled of stale cigarette smoke. Her hand found a light switch and flicked it on.
A dingy couch looked as though someone had spilled drinks on it repeatedly and never bothered to clean it up, an ashtray sitting on the dusty coffee table overflowed with cigarette butts, and dozens of empty Mountain Dew bottles lay heaped beside the couch.
All the comforts of home.
“Bobby?” she whispered. “Randy? Is anyone here?” She scanned the carpet for signs of blood, and even though it was so dirty she couldn’t determine the original color, it didn’t look like anything red and wet had dripped on it in recent minutes.
She proceeded to the next room through an open archway and passed a dining room table and chairs. Next she entered the kitchen and learned that whoever stayed here wasn’t fond of doing the dishes or taking out the garbage, either, as waste overflowed from a can in the corner. Fat flies buzzed around a bag of apples on the counter. One tried landing on her arm.
“Is anybody home?” Wrinkling her nose, Carly moved on from the kitchen and found flights of stairs going down and up.
She chose up and arrived at a landing off of which lay a single bedroom and a bathroom. No sooner had she done so when a scratching-fluttering-flapping sound issued from somewhere above the ceiling. Oh, yuck. Something’s alive up in the attic.
Ignoring the sound, Carly stuck her head through the bedroom doorway. “Hello?”
No reply. She stepped further into the room and switched on the light.
A four-poster bed had been neatly made and covered in hot pink blankets and pillows. To the left sat a dresser, and on top of it sat a white jewel box and a sort of metal tree on which hung a bunch of necklaces.
Could Bobby’s mother have been staying in this room? Perhaps the woman’s kidnapping had all been a ruse to kidnap Bobby, which seemed farfetched but not impossible. Adrian may very well have traveled all the way across the country to see Bobby, stayed at the campground, and met up with Jack Willard at that nasty bar in Hillsdale for the sole purpose of finding someone to help orchestrate Bobby’s capture.
Heck, Adrian and Jack might even be friends.
Her lip curling at the thought of anyone befriending the man who’d helped hurt Randy, Carly yanked the top dresser drawer open only to see a collection of Victoria’s Secret’s finest. After making a vow to scrub her hands when she got the chance, she moved the lingerie aside and found an expired driver’s license that had been issued to Rayna Vasquez Robles in the Mexican state of Sonora.
Rayna had dark hair, a deep brown complexion, and a conceited smile—or maybe Carly was just seeing things based on her own assumptions.
“Don’t you know what these people do here?”
Carly froze at the sound of Thane’s voice. He was here. Right behind her. Trying to make her doubt her sanity once more.
She wasn’t going to fall for it.
She dropped the license and slid the drawer closed before opening the next one. If she continued to ignore Thane, maybe he would go away.
“Come on,” Thane said. “I know you can hear me. You want to know what these people do here. I know you do.”
Carly steadied her shaking hands as she went through more of Rayna’s things. She didn’t need a demon to tell her what all went on within the walls of this hovel. She could use her own wits and figure it out herself.
The next drawer contained an amethyst geode that sparkled from purple facets. Next to it sat a small soapstone box, and shoved in the back of the drawer was a framed photograph of Rayna and four other Hispanic women sitting at a table in a restaurant.
“Nothing to see here, is there?” Thane went on. “That’s because they hide it well. They’ll tell you one thing when the truth is something else, but I suppose that’s the way of humanity. We all wear a mask, though some wear it better than others. Graham wore a mask. Jack still wears it. And you do, too, even though you won’t admit it.”
Carly took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders, and turned. Thane, dressed all in white this time, was sitting at the end of the four-poster bed with his legs dangling over the side. His weight made no impression in the bedspread.
She walked out the door without even giving him a nod of acknowledgment.
Her next stop was the basement. She swallowed a knot of fear. As she descended the stairs and took the next flight down to the basement, she realized that deep down she’d known she wouldn’t find Bobby or Randy here at all.
Carly clapped a hand over her mouth as the basement steps terminated at a gray cement floor. A dark-haired woman who could only be Rayna Vasquez Robles lay crumpled just feet away, a pool of dark red congealing beneath her.
The smell of blood made Carly gag. How long had the woman been lying here? Was she alive when Carly called the police or had someone dropped by earlier in the day to end her life?
“Help…”
Carly’s heart fluttered at the sound of the heavily accented voice. She approached the woman on light feet and crouched down beside her.
Rayna’s eyes were open in a hollow stare, but something in them sparked to life when Carly entered her field of vision.
“What happened here?” Carly asked. “Where are Bobby and Randy?” And Adrian?
Confusion entered Rayna’s eyes. “Compromised.”
“What?”
“This…location.” Rayna winced, and sudden anger filled her eyes. “It must be you. The reason I have to die.”
“Did you trap women here?”
“It is…none of your business.” Her eyes closed. She said something in Spanish before becoming still.
Carly felt a pang of sorrow despite Rayna’s apparent association with the network of traffickers.
Thane appeared on the staircase. “You still don’t know everything. Pity that.”
If only there was a way to shut him up!
Continuing to pretend Thane didn’t exist, Carly moved past the dead woman down a bare hallway. A thick metal door sat ajar on the left. Carly peered inside and saw a collection of dirty cots and a bucket that might have doubled as a toilet. One of the cots was overturned as if some struggle had occurred there, and a coil of rope lay beside it like a dead snake.
She went back into the hallway. Further down on the right was another door, this one closed.
She gulped and stepped forward.
Behind her, Thane snickered.
Her mind filled with the image of her holding a gun and standing over Rayna’s lifeless body. You killed her, Carly! It’s your fault she’s dead!
She gritted her teeth. No it’s not.
The image dissolved, and she was back in the basement hallway. Thane was just trying to screw around in her head again. He couldn’t hurt her unless she let him, and she wasn’t about to give in now that she knew Thane was just a demon who had chosen to manifest as a man.
“I’m not a demon!” Thane called. “I’m your worst nightmare.”
“I doubt it,” Carly muttered as she opened the door.
And she was right. Thane was just an unpleasant dream. The real nightmare lay in the room before her.
BOBBY WAS sitting in the living room recliner in the rental bungalow owned by Graham Willard, alias Dave Upton. His presence there gave him a jolt. Everything was just as it had been during the year he’d lived in the small but comfortable house. Boxy television set in the corner. Coffee table. Quantum mechanics textbook sitting on the end table. Squashed secondhand couch, on which sat Caleb Young, his geeky roommate who had vanished in an air of mystery the week before and never returned.
Caleb’s eyes were large behind the lenses of
his thick glasses; his face as emotionless as always. “It’s about time,” he said as he drilled Bobby with a stare.
Bobby sat up straighter. The chair felt solid beneath him. “Is this a dream? I don’t live here anymore.”
Caleb shrugged. “Dream or not, you’re here.”
“Okay,” Bobby said. “And what about you? You’re not even human. I figured that much out on my own.”
Caleb didn’t answer. He leaned forward and steepled his fingers together. “You’ve found yourself in a bit of trouble.”
Bobby tried to think back to what had been happening just before he showed up here but drew a blank. “Oh yeah?”
“I want to remind you that you must do your best to preserve your own life, even at the expense of those you may care about. You are the Servant. You must not die.”
This didn’t sound good at all. “So you’re saying it’s better if Randy or Phil or whoever’s around me dies?”
Caleb tilted his head to one side. “Dying isn’t going to hurt them. All of your kind must die eventually.”
Bobby crossed his arms. “I don’t want anyone to die.”
“I don’t want anyone to die, either, but if it comes down to it, better them than you.”
“That sounds so harsh.”
“But it’s the truth.” Caleb cleared his throat. “I advised another Servant not to go out one day. He ignored me and soon found a knife in his heart, which I understand is not the most pleasant feeling one might experience.”
Bobby gulped. Hans Mueller.
Caleb continued. “More recently, I advised a Servant who had a morbid fear of flying insects to stay home. He’d left the windows down in his car and didn’t know that bees had been attracted to a can of Pepsi he’d left in the cup holder. He left anyway and crashed into a utility pole when they flew out of the can.” He allowed a grim smile. “Luckily that Servant had already found a replacement before he died.”
Bobby found himself nodding. It was strange hearing Caleb go on like this when in the year he’d known him, Caleb hadn’t been the chatty type. “So basically your job is to protect the Servants.”
“Yes, but only if they listen.”
“How many Servants have there been?”
“Many more than you could ever keep track of.”
“And what about Thane?” Bobby asked. “Is he like you, or something else?”
A shadow darkened Caleb’s face. “Thane has let his own arrogance get to his head. The only thing you can do for him is pray.”
“That doesn’t tell me what he is.”
Caleb seemed to ponder something. Then, “You’re about to wake up. Be vigilant and don’t be afraid.” This time he really did smile. “I know you can do it.”
The next thing Bobby knew, he was lying on his back on something soft in a place devoid of light.
Someone close by let out a moan. “Argh. I think someone tried to brain me.”
Bobby sat up. “Randy?”
“That’s me. You okay?”
“I think so. What about you?”
“I feel like I have a hangover.” Randy paused. “Someone’s lying next to me. I can hear them breathing.”
“Who is it?”
“If I had night vision goggles, I might be able to tell you. Wait a minute.” Randy’s voice faltered. “Those dogs. I thought we were goners.”
The memory of sharp teeth tearing into Bobby’s flesh made him wince. He rubbed the back of the hand that had taken the brunt of the first dog’s fury and found the skin perfectly smooth. “Kevin must have healed us.”
“Kevin wasn’t with us. Remember?”
“Maybe he followed us at a distance to keep an eye on me.”
“Our dear Mr. Lyle seemed a little too distraught to think of something like that. Even if he did follow us and got to us in time, it doesn’t explain how he was able to get past the dogs, and it doesn’t explain where we are.”
“Maybe Kevin’s the person lying next to you.”
“Dear God, I hope so.”
The pitch-darkness was starting to give Bobby the creeps. Either they had been out for so long that night had fallen, or they were somewhere underground. “I’m going to find a light.”
Bobby swung his legs to the left. He found the edge of the mattress on which he sat and gingerly tapped the floor with his feet. It felt like tile.
He got to his feet and held his arms out in front of him. Show me the way to go.
Bobby took baby steps across the room and managed to stub his toe on something that made him gnash his teeth together. Where in the world were his shoes?
Ten steps after he got up from the bed, his hands made contact with a wall. He patted around for a switch and found one.
The light was so bright in contrast to the blackness that at first Bobby couldn’t see a thing.
Behind him Randy said, “Oh!”
Bobby blinked. They were in what appeared to be a large, windowless storage room with white walls. An assortment of junk including broken lamps, stained pillowcases, and a dismantled table was jammed without regard to order on some nearby shelves.
Bobby had lain on a dirty twin-sized mattress, while Randy and their unknown companion shared a king-sized one. Were they in a hotel?
Randy was eyeing the unconscious form beside him. Whoever it was had curled up into a ball. Bobby saw a spill of long, dark hair, and his stomach flipped.
As though they had taken on minds of their own, his legs carried him across the room and stopped beside the mattress. His eyes glued themselves to the woman’s face. Her chest rose and fell with quick exhalations, and her eyes fluttered frantically behind closed lids.
“Is it her?” Randy asked.
Bobby nodded. Here lay the woman who had captivated his father all those years ago. The woman who had been the light of Ken Roland’s life until she had a kid and realized parenting would just be too much trouble.
Anger welled up inside of him and manifested itself as tears.
Randy nudged Adrian in the side. “Hey. Wake up.”
Bobby wanted to tell him to stop. If Adrian awoke, he would have to talk to her. But what else had he expected? He had wanted to rescue her from the house behind St. Paul’s where dogs had nearly killed him. Did he really think he would have been able to get her out without engaging in any kind of conversation?
Adrian stirred and let out a string of garbled words.
Then her eyes fluttered open and stared directly at him. Astonishment lit up her face. “Bobby?”
Bobby’s ears rang. “How did you know that’s what they call me?” he asked, which seemed a lousy greeting but was a lot nicer than most of the things he could have said.
An echo of Carly’s voice flitted through his head once more. What will you do with your pain?
And then his father’s advice from the vision: Love your mother.
Adrian sat up. Her blouse was stained and wrinkled. She’d probably been wearing it for days. “Charlotte told me. She showed me a lot of pictures of you over the years, too. We had a very long talk.” An expression Bobby hadn’t expected shined in her eyes: remorse. Her blue-eyed stare penetrated his. “I’m sorry.”
While Bobby tried to come up with something to say that wouldn’t make him sound like an idiot, Randy got up and tried the door. It didn’t open. “Of course,” Randy muttered.
Bobby took a deep breath. “Do you have any idea where we are?” he asked Adrian.
“I wish I did. The last thing I remember is a cop coming in and clubbing me on the head. I was surprised because Rayna said they didn’t want me. They thought I was too old.”
“The traffickers, you mean?”
She nodded. “She said their clients prefer the young, supple ones.” Her face paled. “Monique! Oh, God. They took Monique.”
Monique, whoever she was, must have been imprisoned with her.
Randy strode over to a dinged-up dresser and started yanking open drawers.
“What are you doing?” Bo
bby asked, shaken.
“Seeing if anyone was thoughtful enough to leave a sledgehammer in here so we can break down the door.”
Adrian let out a choked sob. “That poor little girl. For them to do that to her…” She marched over to the door, giving the knob a violent yank. She continued to tug and tug even though she would have needed to be a bodybuilder to tear the door out of its frame with her bare hands.
Bobby gaped at her, and even Randy paused in his search of the dresser to stare at the woman’s antics. The sound of the door jiggling probably carried throughout the entire dwelling. Whoever was in charge here might drop in to see them at any moment.
Strangely, he felt none of the urgency he associated with an oncoming premonition. It was possible that some kind soul had rescued them from the dogs and taken them here to recuperate.
Yet why was the door locked?
And why are our wounds healed like they were never there?
Adrian ceased trying to bring the door down and backed up several steps. “Someone’s coming.”
A hush fell over them all, and sure enough, the approach of light footsteps issued from beyond the door.
At once a black, writhing aura filled Bobby’s mind like a pulsating ocean of death. He braced himself against attack, willing his painful memories to be kept at bay.
It seemed an eternity before the lock disengaged and the door swung inward.
A gaunt, dark-haired man in his late twenties stood in the doorway. He had large dark circles under his eyes, which were ringed in eyeliner. “Welcome,” he said in a soft tone as he stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “How are you feeling?”
Bobby knew that this man was a victim, unlike Jack, whose aura didn’t have a tenth the intensity of this one. “Who are you, and why are we here?”
“My name is Vincent,” he said, wearing a vague smile as if he knew the punchline of some joke Bobby wasn’t aware of.
Keep asking him questions, the Spirit urged.
Bobby licked dry lips. Might as well. “What do you do here?”
Vincent’s smile broadened, and in some corner of Bobby’s mind he could hear the man’s tormentor snickering. “I’m a healer. I healed you.”
