by Sarah Blair
Silently, it faced them.
“My name is Agent Lake.” She spoke to the board members in a voice that was much stronger than she felt. “This is my partner, Agent Williams.”
The demon bared its teeth and growled, in an angry tiger warning. The hairs on her neck stood at attention. In the space of a blink the head twisted and changed. The nose and ears elongated, and the eyes flashed bright yellow while the pupils turned to black serpentine slits. The vision was gone as quickly as it had come.
“Great,” Williams said. The tone of his voice let Sidney know exactly how not-great it really was. Her heart felt like it was about to jump out of her chest and make a run for it with or without her.
She made eye contact with the younger man kneeling at his co-worker’s side. His eyes were a light, soft blue, and he was closer to her age than the rest of the men in the room, she wondered if maybe he was an intern right out of college.
“He okay?” she asked.
“He’s breathing,” the intern said.
The demon leaped on top of the table. The four men sank low in their chairs.
“I didn’t invite you,” the demon hissed. A pressure crushed Sidney’s chest, like an elephant stepped on her. Williams gasped beside her and she knew he felt the same thing.
She shut her eyes and willed her arm to move. It was numb and stiff, like the time she’d been removing wallpaper in the bathroom and accidentally hit the uncovered light socket with the metal scraper blade.
All she could manage was a whisper, but she said the first scripture that came to mind. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Then Williams recited The 23rd Psalm and she joined in. As they finished together, her voice strengthened and her breath came easier. Somehow she was able to move her arm enough to wrap her fingers around her cross. The silver warmed in her palm and the pressure on her chest released.
Williams fell to his knees, coughing. Sidney sagged against the door. She reached into her pocket and felt for the Holy water. She wouldn’t dare use it until the time was right, but simply knowing it was there reassured her.
She caught her partner’s eye and pointed to her pocket. He checked his own and nodded.
“Which one of you conjured this thing?” she asked the men at the table. “Who did it?”
“Conjure? Ha!” The demon’s laugh sounded like shattering glass. Ignoring the demon angered it, but giving it attention and showing it fear only made it stronger. There was no way to win.
A seam opened down the front of the entity on the table. The skin drooped and fell away like a wilted banana peel. Something huge rose up out of it, the color of true black. It sucked in all of the available light as it drifted upward.
As it reached the ceiling it took the vague form of a human; two arms, two legs, one head. The eyes returned and blinked vertically like a snake. A hundred tiny yellow daggers filled the mouth. The fingers—if they could be called that—ended in razor-like claws. They reminded her of the ancient dinosaur fossils she’d seen at the Museum of Natural History.
“Over here,” the young man with blue eyes said. The man on the floor moved his lips but no sound came out.
She uttered another prayer and dashed across the room.
“Prayers are useless without faith to back them up.” The demon’s wicked laugh filled the whole room.
Before she could even blink, the air grew thick and she felt like she was trying to breathe through a pillow. Her skin crawled as if thousands of tiny pixies skittered across her flesh. Her ears filled with a humming, and she tasted metal.
Mitch hadn’t asked her to join the team because she was any kind of a wuss who would freeze up when things got tough. He’d chosen her because he’d seen something she wasn’t able to see in herself. She pushed past the onslaught of magic and squeezed the cross around her neck.
“Come on, Williams. We’re not going to let a measly demon kick our asses, are we?”
He gasped. “No way.”
The assault released. She fell on her hands and knees beside the board member. Sweat beaded up on his forehead. His eyes remained half-closed and unfocused. His breath came in short rasps.
“Call it off. You have to send it back.” The hum grew so loud she could hardly hear her own voice to know whether or not she was screaming. “Banish it!”
The man convulsed on the floor. Sidney turned his head to the side and thick foam oozed out of his mouth onto the carpet. His head went loose in her hands, and a sound came out of him as if being forced through a straw.
“What’s your name?” she asked the young man.
“Edward.” He glanced above her head.
It was too late.
The demon dissolved and swirled around him; Edward completely disappeared within the blackness. A short scream ended with an abrupt and sickening crunch. Blood sprayed across Sidney’s face. Edward fell to the floor, his chest opened wide and empty, like a victim from a cult alien film.
The pure darkness hovered over her in an ugly storm cloud.
“You smell delicious.” The thing breathed the full stench of sulfur across her face. Sidney shut her eyes and turned her head away as a long line of thick saliva dripped closer.
A weight between her shoulders pushed her to the floor. Her cheek stung as it rubbed against the berber carpet. The bottle of water crushed under her, making her only line of defense completely useless.
Thick claws tore through her jacket into her flesh and there was a quiet pop accompanied by excruciating pain. She sucked in a breath, preparing for her arm to tear away from her body.
“You can’t have my arm, asshole,” she ground the words through gritted teeth. “Get off me!”
The thing seized up on top of her as if electrocuted. It screamed a sound so deafening and miserable that she screamed too. The enormous conference table shuddered and cracked right down the middle with a bang like lightning splitting a tree.
The demon twisted and writhed in the air above her, still screaming—the sound of a thousand violins playing all the wrong notes.
It dissolved into a billow of black smoke.
Sidney blinked up at the ceiling in a daze.
“Lake?” Williams’ face entered her vision. “What the hell were you doing?”
“More than you were.” Her arm was numb, and she glanced over to make sure it was still there. The second she moved, the pain rushed in.
“If it wasn’t for me you’d be that dude.” He grimaced at Edward’s corpse on the floor, and looked back at her when she didn’t answer.
“Hey, Sidney?” Things were always bad when he used her first name. “I don’t think your hand is supposed to be turned around like that.”
“Move.” She pushed him aside with her good arm as she rolled over and lost her lunch.
Williams scooted behind her to avoid the mess.
“Yeah, I don’t think that’s good either. We should go.” He tucked his arms under hers and lifted her up. She bit her lip to keep from screaming. Every tiny movement was agonizing. He held her uninjured arm around his neck and practically dragged her back to the elevator bay.
The four executives waited for the car to come up. One of them had a wet spot on the front of his pants. Silent tears made tracks down another’s cheeks. All four were pale and shaking. None could speak.
She glanced down at her torn jacket. Blood dripped from her limp fingertips onto the pristine carpet.
The elevator doors opened. They all stepped in. Williams was the only one with presence of mind to push the button.
The doors closed them inside the elevator car. With the four extra men it seemed much smaller than on the way up. Or, maybe it was Sidney’s vision narrowing.
She stared at her reflection again. It was even more blurred than before, and this time dark spots floated across her image.
“Come on, Lake.” Her partner tucked his arm aroun
d her waist. “Almost there.”
The downward motion of the elevator made her stomach roll. Sidney swallowed hard, trying to keep her eyes open. She leaned into Williams, letting him hold her up. As soon as the doors slid open and the rest of the men exited, he scooped her up in his arms. A scream echoed across the marble lobby. It might have come from her own mouth, but she couldn’t be sure.
The trip back to the cafeteria was a smear of nothing; the same sensation as highway hypnosis—one second they stepped out of the elevators, the next they pushed through the door to the cafeteria. She knew something should have come in between, but couldn’t think of what it might be.
Williams lay her out across the table. Her legs hung off the edge, her feet rested on the seat of the booth. Peters and Williams stared down at her. Strong hands cradled her head.
Williams looked her in the eye. “Sorry, Partner, this is gonna suck.”
“Hang in there, Sid.” She tracked the sound of the voice and found the chief’s strong, square chin hovering above her head.
“Get her up,” Peters said.
“You sure it’s a good idea?” The chief didn’t even finish his sentence before Williams wrapped his arms around her and pulled her up into a sitting position. The room spun like she’d been lifted into a tornado.
“Not good,” she groaned.
Williams tucked one arm around her neck and one low around her waist, and held her up against his chest.
The men got her out of her coat and Peters ripped away the shredded sleeve of her sweater, exposing her arm. Long ragged marks ran down her shoulder to her elbow.
“Is that my bone?” she asked.
“Don’t look,” the chief told her. He squeezed her left hand while Peters took hold of her right arm. She sucked in a sharp breath.
“No screaming in my ear,” Williams warned.
“Ready?” It sounded like Peters. “One, two—” He rotated the joint back into place. It was over before she even knew it was happening. The pain signals registered in her brain and she cried out, but Williams pressed her face into his shirt to muffle the sound.
“Sorry, Lake. That was the easy part.”
She glanced over in time to see Peters with more Holy water.
“No. No, wait. I’m fine. Really.”
“You could lose your arm.” Peters gave her a sorry frown. She knew he didn’t want to hurt her. She also enjoyed having her arm where it was.
“Trust me, it’s better if you don’t watch. Williams you’re good right there. Chief, keep her arm steady.”
She turned her head against Williams’ shoulder. The chief wrapped one hand around her arm above her wrist, and the other below her elbow. His hands were so big they practically covered her entire forearm. Peters tilted the bottle over her shoulder and water sluiced through the wounds.
There was only the sound of the water splashing on the floor as it washed over her arm. It felt cool and wonderful. The pain lifted away with the thin waft of steam that rose off her skin.
Sidney relaxed against Williams with a sigh of relief.
“Something’s not right,” Peters said.
Sidney lifted her head. All three men stared at her.
“What?” she asked. “Why did you stop?”
Peters poured more water over the wound. The water mixed with her blood and formed a pink puddle under the table.
“That doesn’t hurt?”
“No.”
“I barely even touched that door handle and I felt like my hand would melt off when you poured the water on it.” Williams showed Sidney his hand. It was bright red, like a sunburn. “Still stings.”
“Did you regurgitate anything?” Peters asked.
“My lunch,” Sidney said.
“Nothing black or oily?”
She shook her head.
Peters’ shoulders sagged and he put the lid back on the jug. “The evil didn’t get in. She’s already healing. Won’t even need stitches.”
The chief examined her arm. “How is that possible?”
“Beats the hell outta me.” Peters put his hands on his hips and stared at Sidney. “But how often do we see shit in this line of work we can’t explain?”
“Like, every five minutes,” Williams said.
“You two get things tied up here,” the chief said. “Tell the press it was a gas leak. You know the drill.”
Sidney slid off the table and her knees wobbled. He put his hand under her good elbow to steady her. “Come on, let’s get you home.”
Six
Sidney was too tired to open her eyes. Instead she listened to the regular rhythm of wiper blades swiping across the windshield and a sharp blast of a horn here and there from impatient cab drivers.
First she felt Mitch’s stare, then his fingers curled her hair behind her ear. It was only for a second, but it made her ache for more. She turned her head to the left, hoping to catch the brush of his hand on her cheek, but she wasn’t quick enough.
Sidney opened her eyes in time to see Mitch return his hand to the steering wheel as the tide of cars surged forward.
“How you doing over there?” he asked.
She lifted her shoulder without thinking and regretted it. A windbreaker printed with the bright yellow letters FBI covered her body, trapping her arms under the seat belt. The twinkling lights of Park Avenue stretched out beyond the rain dotted window. It wasn’t full dark yet, but the tall buildings cast a false twilight over the wide avenue that made the brake lights of the yellow cabs seem brighter.
“What I wouldn’t give for some pea soup right about now,” she said.
Mitch smiled, but she could tell by the way his thumbs turned white around the steering wheel, he wasn’t happy.
The light changed. They made a left onto 46th and crossed Lexington. He pulled up at the curb in front of her building and shut the engine off. She tried to free herself before he made it around, but his windbreaker was wrapped around her like a strait jacket.
Mitch opened her door and leaned across her to unbuckle the seatbelt. She caught a whiff of his worn off cologne, a citrusy sweet scent of oranges and chocolate. The prickle of his five o’clock shadow teased her cheek. He must have noticed the hitch in her breath because he stopped with his hands on either side of her and stared into her eyes. So close, all she had to do was lean forward a little . . . .
“Come on. I’ll walk you up.” He pulled back to help her out onto the curb.
“Thanks for the ride.” She handed him his jacket. “I’ll be fine.”
He shut the car door and the double beep of the lock told her there would be no argument. While Sidney felt her empty pockets, trying to remember what she’d done with her keys, Mitch was right there, opening the outside door to the entrance of the four-story walk-up with his own set.
The smell of boiled artichokes drifted down into the narrow stairwell from Mrs. Oliva’s apartment on the second floor. After six years, Sidney was used to the stale air in the unvented center of the building. It smelled no different than the day she moved in when she was eighteen.
The antique elevator probably hadn’t worked in her entire lifetime so she bypassed it, taking the garish red staircase that wound its way up the inside of the building. Climbing this staircase always made her feel like she was living in an Alfred Hitchcock film. Of course, it wasn’t unusual for her days to play out like a horror movie. Today had been rated ‘R’ for sure.
After all that happened, it was nice to feel the strength and warmth of Mitch’s hand splayed across her back, steadying her as she climbed to the third floor. She leaned against the wall and let him unlock her door.
“Maybe it’s better if you don’t come in.” The day had left her raw and needy. She didn’t trust herself to be professional right now.
He flicked the light on and held the door open, tilting his head inside.
She followed him, unable to decide if he was angry or disappointed with her. Maybe both. It definitely wasn’t the first time he�
�d brought her home injured and taken care of her. He had to be getting tired of the routine.
Sidney wanted something different, something more, but she didn’t know how to ask for it. The nights she spent in his bed were always the most restful. She felt safe with him, and that brought its own set of problems. She didn’t want a man or anyone else to make her feel safe, she wanted to feel safe with herself.
She shut and locked the door behind them.
Her apartment was two spaces merged into one, covering the entire third level. A galley kitchen, barely big enough to walk through, connected the wide open living room and front bathroom with her bedroom and a second bathroom toward the back of the building. The window in her back bathroom let out onto the roof of the restaurant below, giving her access to a small patio with a spectacular view of the Chrysler Building.
Mitch disappeared into the back. A second later, water turned on, but she was too numb to follow him. She was too numb to do anything except stand there and stare at the shadows under her desk by the window.
It reminded her of how the demon had absorbed all the light in the room, like it was swallowing it down. She shivered where she stood and kept her eyes on the print of her favorite painting by John William Waterhouse, a red-haired lady and her knight called Lamia.
Mitch’s hands circled her waist. She sucked in a sharp breath and stiffened her hands into fists.
“Only me.” With a reassuring squeeze, he led her through the apartment into the back bathroom and the cast iron claw foot tub filling with steaming water.
“I slept with the lights on for a month after I met a demon,” he said, while he undressed her like a rag doll. He slowed down, careful as he pulled her camisole over her arm to check her injury. Sidney risked a glance. It looked like an excited three-year-old had gone wild with a red marker.
There were other scars from other battles here and there across her body, some worse than others, but none as bad as the newest one.
“It tore that guy’s heart out of his chest like it was nothing,” Sidney said. “My whole arm should look like the back of Peters’ hand, but it doesn’t.”
