by Lori Devoti
I flinched. My gaze dropped to the ground. I wanted to ask why he was talking to Brittany, what his strange question meant, but I didn’t, couldn’t. Instead, I said, “Prove it. Show me more.” If I goaded him, maybe he’d slip and give me some clue that would help me find Holmes.
He grinned, but only for a second and then he was gone. Holmes was back at his computer, clicking his mouse now. As he did my focus shifted, zoomed in onto the screen. The picture was of a room, shot from above. The camera I realized was mounted somewhere over head. A boy, one of the ones who had wandered through my circle, lay on a metal table, the kind you saw on TV in a morgue.
I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t.
The camera shifted slightly, giving a fuller view of the boy’s body. He was strapped down with thick strips of canvas-like material. A blue paper sheet covered his lower half, but his upper body was exposed, naked. Beside him in a metal dish lay forceps and scalpels.
Holmes tapped the mouse again, then shoved himself away from his desk. He walked to the corner of the room, to a coat rack where a white doctor’s coat hung. Smiling, he pulled it on. Then he picked up a medical mask and looped the elastic bands around his ears. Finally, he pulled two gloves from a box on his desk and turned to the door.
He was dressed. Ready for surgery, and it was obvious on whom.
“So, want to make a deal?” Kobal was back, this time sitting sideways in his chair; his legs dangled over the arm. His wings dropped down over the other arm, brushing the dirt beneath him.
His too casual pose did nothing to reassure me. It had quite the opposite effect actually.
“When does that happen?” I asked.
He shifted, moved his feet back to the space in front of his chair. “Oh, so now you believe me?”
“When?” I repeated. Oscar had said time didn’t work for demons the way it did for humans. I prayed what Kobal had shown us was a scene from the future, a future I could change.
He placed two fingers under his chin. “Hard to say. Could be tomorrow, next week, or maybe right now. Actually—” He tapped the fingers against his chin. “It could have been yesterday.” He turned his gaze on me, clear, concentrated and intense, like a laser. “You won’t know until you get there. If you get there.”
The athame I’d forgotten I held knocked against my thigh. I glanced down at it, then moved it so it lay balanced on top of my palms. I held the knife, but my gaze quickly shifted to my hands and the blood I imagined there.
Whatever Holmes was doing. I had a hand in it.
I looked up. “What do you want?”
Kobal stood, and the chair disappeared. “Nothing you haven’t done already. Want to play?”
No, I didn’t, but I was beginning to believe I didn’t have a choice.
“Humor me. Tell me exactly what you want, what I give and you receive.”
He stepped forward. His wings seemed darker now. A wind caught them and rippled the feathers as they brushed over the ground. “I want to help others. There are many, many demons at home. Demons not lucky enough to have someone like you call on them. They’re lonely, depressed.”
My heart bled for them.
“You’ve seen firsthand that letting demons into the world doesn’t have to end with disaster. Look at Oscar and Nellie. Have they caused any harm?”
He didn’t wait for my reply. “Not all demons are like Holmes. You agree to work with me, allow me to shuffle demons into your world for short periods of time, and I’ll help you find Holmes. Pull him back myself.”
No, no way. I couldn’t do this. I bent down and picked up the candle.
“Lucinda.” His tone was terse and filled with warning. “You can save those boys and the girl too. Holmes only plays with his victims so long. They all die eventually and not in an easy way.”
I forced words through my teeth. “Death is never easy.” I chopped the lit end off the candle, waited for it to topple to the ground, and then crushed it under my foot.
When I looked up, Kobal was gone.
Shaking, I turned to Brittany. “Well, we did it. What did we learn?”
Her hands were wrapped around the fence, and her face was pale. “That Holmes is a sick son of a bitch, but I think we already knew that.”
“What about Kobal? Did he give us anything we can use? Or did we just waste an hour of our lives?” And the boys, an hour they couldn’t afford to lose.
Brittany walked around the fence, then bent over to retrieve the smashed bit of candle. Tossing it from one hand to another, she replied. “I think he did.”
Chapter 13
By the next morning, Brittany had a lead.
She picked me up at home before school, except we weren’t headed to school. Not today. Today we were hunting a demon. I sat my backpack onto the floor in front of me. It clanked. Brittany glanced at it, then tapped a flat box that was suction-cupped to her dash. “I borrowed my dad’s GPS,” she said. “I told him we were skipping to help the Bethel Y set up their haunted house. That it was at some old farm house and I didn’t want to get lost.”
“You told him we were skipping?”
She raised a brow. “For a cause.”
“What happens when the Y says they never saw us?” I asked.
Busy tapping on the device’s small screen, she shot me a barely tolerant look. “First, he’s not going to check on us. Second, if he does, I have it covered. A friend’s really working on the house. I helped him find some speakers and stuff, cheap. He’ll cover for us.”
I settled back in my seat, thankful my grandmother would cross the street before she’d talk to Brittany’s family. She was not as trusting as Brittany’s father apparently was.
Done tapping, Brittany put her car in gear. “It’ll take us twenty minutes to get there, but we have a stop to make first.”
I glanced at her, surprised. She hadn’t mentioned this when she called last night.
After our visit with Kobal, Brittany had taken me home. After seeing Kobal’s Holmes skit, and I prayed that’s all it had been, it had been hard to walk back into my house acting like nothing was wrong. But I had to. Brittany was the expert at finding things, including information. My skills were tapped in that area. Besides, I’d had my own role to fill. I had to research killing or at least exiling a demon.
So, we’d gone to our respective homes and done our jobs. I’d dug up as many demon-hunting stories as I could, and armed myself with everything from holy water, thanks to our Catholic neighbor, to salt, thanks to Morton’s.
And Brittany had got us an address.
After seeing Kobal’s presentation, we realized wherever Holmes was, he was using some kind of computer monitoring set-up. Brittany had used her network and found a guy who installed security cameras. She’d told him she worked for Dr. Howard, and he’d taken the bait. With a little Brittany magic, she’d gotten the address out of him too. That was where we were headed, or where I’d thought we were headed. The detour was news to me.
“Where?” I asked.
She flipped on her blinker and took a quick right. “You know a lot about demons, right?”
I hesitated; I knew a lot about demons for your average High School sophomore. But compared to say my mother, I was downright remedial. Still, I answered, “Right.” I was, after all, the closest thing to a demon expert we had. Or so I thought.
“But you don’t know everything.”
“No one knows everything,” I replied. Look at my mother. Had she known that the demon she called was going to suck her away from us?
My fingernails scraped over my jeans.
I hoped not. I hoped she hadn’t chosen a demon over me.
Unaware of the turmoil this conversation was stirring up inside me, Brittany continued. “A demon does.”
“A demon…?” My hands flattened on my thighs. “You can’t mean…Where are we going?”
Her next turn, onto the gravel road that led to the cow pasture, answered me.
I placed a hand on
the dash and turned in my seat so I was facing her. “I’m not calling Kobal again.” I wasn’t ready to face the demon lord again. If we could get rid of Holmes on our own, I hoped I wouldn’t have to.
She glanced at me. “Kobal? Who mentioned Kobal?”
“Then.” Oscar or Nellie.
“Which one?” I asked.
“Both. At least both agreed to come with us.”
“How?” I asked.
“How what?” she replied.
“How everything. How’d you get in touch with them? How’d you convince them to help us? And how can you possibly think we can trust them?” I realized my voice had risen to a near yell. I snapped my teeth together and sat back against the seat. “For all we know they are working with Holmes.”
She kept driving, but slowed her pace. “Do you think Oscar is working with Holmes?”
I glanced out the window. “No.”
“And I don’t think Nellie is either,” she replied, her voice soft.
My brows drew together. I started to ask her what could possibly make her trust Nellie, but the way her profile looked as she stared out over the steering wheel, the way her lower lip trembled, just slightly, stopped me.
“You.” I was afraid to say what was going through my mind, afraid if I did and was wrong, she’d hate me for even thinking it.
Caldera is a small town in the buckle of the Bible belt. There were things common other places that people here pretended didn’t happen, things other people embraced openly on TV that in Caldera, Bethel even, would get you ostracized.
I let it drop and faced the front instead. Brittany trusted Nellie. It didn’t mean I had to. And I didn’t. I didn’t like the suspicion that Nellie might be playing with Brittany the way she’d tried to play with me either. Nellie was confusing her.
Maybe it was a good thing we were going to get the succubus. I could use the time to break Brittany from whatever spell Nellie had cast over her, show her that whatever trust she thought she had in the demon was false.
“So, they’re staying at the pasture?” I had wondered about that. We had followed Nellie there before, but I hadn’t been sure what that meant. I hadn’t seen any signs of anyone living there.
The tension in Brittany’s shoulders melted. “I don’t know. I don’t really get it. But it’s where Nellie said we should pick them up.” She tapped her palm on the steering wheel. “Do you think they were there last night when you were talking with Kobal?”
I shook my head. “Who knows? I can see Oscar staying there; it is his family’s property, or was, but Nellie? Why would she?”
“Maybe she just has nowhere else to go.”
It sounded sad when Brittany said it, almost made me feel sorry for the succubus. Almost.
Again I swallowed my comments. If Brittany was under Nellie’s spell, I had to be careful how I worked this. I didn’t want to drive Brittany off by stating the obvious—that Nellie was a manipulative bitch from hell and a succubus capable of making Brittany feel all kinds of things that weren’t real.
“How’d you get a hold of her anyway?” At Brittany’s startled glance, I added. “Last night, to set up today?”
“Oh, she gave me a phone number. I called it.”
“Do demons have cell phones?”
She shrugged. “I guess Nellie does.”
We’d arrived at the pasture. When we pulled into the grassy area to park, Oscar and Nellie were waiting. Nellie was sitting on top of the fence, feet swinging. Oscar was leaning against a post looking bored and strangely appealing because of it.
We got out to greet them. Or, more accurately, to meet them on neutral territory. I wasn’t keen on sitting in a car with Nellie to begin with. I sure didn’t want her to get the idea I was welcoming her by just sliding over and making room.
Nellie hopped down and greeted Brittany with a kiss, on the mouth. I looked away, confused, embarrassed and annoyed. I wanted to jerk Brittany away from her, but I knew if Nellie was spinning her magic around my new/old friend, it wouldn’t do any good. And it might drive a wedge right into the center of our blossoming friendship.
So I swallowed the words that leapt to my throat and made do with a glower.
“Ah, kitten has her fur ruffled.” Nellie sashayed toward me and reached up to touch me. “And she had her chance—.”
I knocked her hand aside. “Don’t,” I said.
“Jealous?” she whispered, then leaned closer so her lips brushed my ear. “There’s plenty of me to go around.”
Brittany was staring at us, her eyes huge, betrayed.
Not even bothering to hide a surge of disgust, I strode toward the car.
“She’s a demon, Brittany,” I muttered as I walked past her. “Don’t let her confuse you.”
Brittany didn’t reply, but she didn’t speak to Nellie either. She just slid behind the wheel. By the time I’d calmed down enough to get in the car myself, Nellie had already taken my spot. I climbed into the back seat next to Oscar.
I didn’t look at him. The back seat was too small and too cliché. And Nellie was right there, ready to pounce and say something cutting.
I looked at her instead. “Hand me my bag.” I thrust my arm over the front seat.
She picked up my backpack and then tossed it in the air. “What’s in here? Should I be afraid?”
I grabbed the bag and settled back into the seat. From his side of the car, I could feel Oscar watching me.
I waited until we were on the highway on our way to Bethel to speak, until I was sure Nellie had forgotten about tormenting me at least for the moment. “Why did you come?” I asked him, quiet and hoping my question wouldn’t draw Nellie’s attention.
Oscar had leaned his head back on the seat and was sitting with his eyes closed. Without moving, he replied. “Why not?”
“Because we are hunting a demon?” I asked.
He opened his eyes. I thought I caught a spark of interest, but then it was gone. “Hunting? Do you think you can kill him?”
I pulled my backpack closer to my body. “I’ve read how.”
“Really.” He closed his eyes.
“You don’t think I can?”
He opened them again and stared at me. I got the same deep feeling of loss I always got around him. My body leaned forward, toward him without my mind even being aware I was going to. “I wish you could,” he whispered. “It would solve everything.” With a sigh, he closed his eyes again. This time I could tell it was for good, that he wasn’t going to offer any more conversation.
I sat back, feeling rejected somehow. I twisted in my seat and stared out the window.
“Oscar doesn’t want to play, kitten,” Nellie called. “You should know that by now.”
Flushing, I clutched my backpack.
Brittany caught my gaze in the rearview mirror. “We’re almost there. Do you know what we’re going to do?”
I swallowed. I’d forgotten for a second where we were headed, what I’d packed for last night, but just like that it all came back to me—Holmes sitting in front of his computer, the screams we’d heard when he first appeared in the circle.
I nodded. “Don’t pull up right in front. We’ll need to sneak up somehow.”
Nellie laughed. “Sneak up on a demon. Kitten, you are so precious.”
I ignored her. If we couldn’t surprise Holmes, we were probably dead. Nellie was just trying to get to me. She had to be.
o0o
The building Brittany’s GPS charted us to was an old shoe factory, three storeys of deserted decay.
There were a lot of old factories in this part of the country. Fifty years ago “made in America” was a given, and factories were the major employers in Caldera and Bethel. Now they were all closed up, had been for years.
Brittany parked in a neighborhood of 1960’s ranch houses complete with peeling paint and rusting swing sets. We got out of the car. The demons wandered off a bit. I grabbed Brittany by the arm.
“I’m not sure this is
a good idea.”
“What?” she asked. “Coming here?”
“Bringing them.” I nodded at Nellie and Oscar who had wandered close to one of the houses. They seemed to be watching a little girl playing in the mud.
I turned my back on them and asked, “What if it’s a trap?”
“Do you think it is?” Oscar stood behind me; he seemed less than interested in my reply.
I glanced back at where he’d last stood. The little girl was still there, but a woman, her mother I guess, had come outside too. She was staring at us from her front porch.
“We better move.” Brittany started to unlock her car door.
“Wait.”
Nellie was crossing the lawn toward the woman.
I grabbed Oscar’s arm. “What’s she doing?” Not waiting for his reply, I slipped my backpack over my shoulder and jogged toward the pair, my heart thumping. When I was still twenty feet away, Nellie stepped off the porch and sashayed toward me. The woman picked up her daughter and carried the now screaming child inside.
“What—?”
“Straighten out your panties. I just suggested she take her husband some lunch.” Nellie laughed. “She seemed to like the idea. She was in a definite hurry to pick out just the right meal. I don’t think she’ll even remember seeing us. In fact, I know she won’t.” She stepped close. “Did you know I could do that? Make you forget? Minutes, days, weeks? Just leave you with the afterglow and the knowledge that you want more?”
“More disgust, distaste and regret?” I muttered.
She laughed again. “That too, if I choose to, but I seldom do. I’m all about the pleasure, kitten. All about the pleasure.” She walked past, her steps slow, confident and seductive.
After Nellie’s intervention, we left the car where we’d parked it and walked to the factory’s deserted parking lot. The asphalt was cracked with clumps of weeds shoving their way through every foot or so. We stood back, hidden behind an out of control bush while I pulled things from my bag. I gave Brittany a spray bottle of holy water and a baggie filled with salt. I started to hand her a crucifix, but remembering her necklace, stopped.
