by Duncan, Lex
***
It was dark and I was cold. I laid awake on the couch, staring up at my ceiling, counting the fissures in the plaster to pass the time. One, two, three, four, four and a half, five―Wait. What was that?
I sat up.
My heart hammered in my chest. The noise, it sounded like claws, dragging along the floor. Every second the scraping lasted, the more my panic grew, congealing in my stomach like a flu. I waited. Listened. Held my breath. A siren blared in the distance, a gust of wind rattled at my window. I waited some more. The scratching stopped.
This was getting ridiculous. I was letting my fear rule my life. A fear that shouldn't have even existed. What happened at the church was scary. What happened with the dog was scary. Meeting Dante and Aralia and Max was scary.
But it wasn't worth this. I needed to chill. Get some sleep. School tomorrow. Detention. Ugh, detention. Had it really only been two days since I punched Jason Clark? It felt like an eternity ago. The Beatrice Todd who walked out of Stone Chapel High School on Friday was not the same one who went demon hunting an evening later on Saturday.
No, I'd changed.
I felt as though I'd been ushered into something much bigger than school, much bigger than overdue rent, much bigger than my life as I had lived it on Friday.
It was Monday now. 2:35 AM, according to my phone. And that, I think, is what scared me the most. Who knew what it would bring? More demons? Death? The ultimate destruction of the universe?
Okay, maybe not that last part.
I laid back down. Counted the cracks again. The repetition calmed my nerves.
I got to fourteen when I heard it.
The growling. A low, menacing noise that sounded exactly like the dog I’d encountered at the church. Only that dog was dead. Aralia killed it. I was safe here in my apartment. I was just imagining things. That's what I was doing. Imagining things. The growling wasn't real, it was a figment of my paranoia. So was the scratching. I was fine, everything was fine. Inhale, exhale. Breathe in, breathe out.
I closed my eyes.
Five hours later, I felt something dripping on my face. Something warm, something sticky, something that dribbled down the bridge of my nose and stopped at the parting of my lips. It tasted like...
Copper.
All at once, my panic came flooding back. I wiped at my nose, knowing full well what I'd come away with.
Sure enough, there it was. Smeared on my fingertips like a bright red warning sign. Blood.
The source?
A giant summoning seal that took up my entire ceiling.
Wiping furiously at my mouth and nose, I threw off my blood-speckled blanket and jumped to my feet. I stumbled, caught myself on the wall, and heaved.
My apartment looked and smelled like a murder scene. Blood dripped on the couch, the floor, the kitchen table, the sink. The damp stench of death permeated the air, moldy and rotten. My eyes watered, sickness rising in my throat.
“Oh my God,” I choked out, pulling my shirt up over my nose to block the smell. My life was turning into a bad slasher film. I half expected the serial killer to pop out of the shadows at any moment, and at this point, I think I would have preferred that over whoever or whatever did this to my apartment.
Gagging, I edged around the blood spatters as best I could to dig my phone from out between the couch cushions. I checked the time. 8:45 AM. Shit. I was late for school.
…But maybe school wasn’t a good idea right now. I had a demonic symbol painted in blood on my ceiling with no clue as to how it got there. I liked to think that was grounds for an absence.
Mind made up, I took a handful of steps toward the sink. I didn’t get far. A low cawing noise startled me from moving around the couch. I looked down. Standing on the floor a few inches away from my feet was a massive crow. Beside it laid the picked-over corpse of a mangy dog. A mangy dog with spikes jutting out of its back and another head sprouting out of its neck.
I could handle the blood, I could handle the symbol, but this?
Nope. I was done.
Slapping my hands over my mouth to block a scream―and maybe some vomit―I staggered away from the gory scene and dialed Dante's number. He picked up after the first ring.
“Hello?” He sounded just as tired as he did the night before.
“Dante?” I said. “It―it's Beatrice, I―”
“What happened?”
The crow gave one last raspy caw before it spread its wings and flew out the window. The glass was busted out. “I—I think I need your help.”
Again.
Happy Monday.
***
“This was here when you woke up?” Dante asked.
I never thought I'd have the world's most famous demon hunter and his merry band of detectives standing around my apartment, but here they were.
Dante looked exhausted. Sharply dressed, yet exhausted. The coat he was wearing reminded me of Sherlock Holmes. If I were in a joking mood, I would've asked him where his hat and pipe were, but since I was having trouble standing, let alone talking, I saved that joke for another day and sat down on the couch.
I felt like I'd just gotten off the world's worst (best?) roller-coaster. I hated roller-coasters.
“Are you okay?” Max asked as he sat down beside me.
I stared at my feet.
He rested a hand on my shoulder. “We're going to find who did this, Beatrice.”
I believed him. They'd done nothing to make me doubt them. If anything, they showed me the light I'd been too stubborn to see. I wasn't cut out for this. I wasn't a hunter. I wasn't Aralia, who poked around the flayed corpse like it was nothing. I wasn't Dante, who dealt with this sort of thing every day and never cracked under the pressure. Hell, I wasn’t even Max, who looked kind of sick to his stomach but still decided to come anyway.
I was arrogant. Desperate. And now I was paying for it.
Aralia straightened up, wiped her hands on a rag she'd stuffed in her back pocket, and gestured for Dante. I watched helplessly as he went to her. Went to the thing that caused my current meltdown.
“This transmutation is sloppy,” she said. “The dog is newly possessed. There’s no way the entropic process could have accelerated so quickly. Whoever did this clearly didn’t care about the end result.”
Dante didn't say anything for a moment. My stomach lurched. I was beginning to hate his silence. It usually meant that things were somehow worse than what they appeared to be. Ugh. I didn't know if I could handle worse.
“That’s because the goal here wasn't successful transmutation,” he said finally. “It was for shock value.” He stood, gaze meeting mine. “Someone wants you out of here very badly, Beatrice.”
Oh, great. Why me? What had I done to deserve this? Plenty of idiots went hunting! I wasn't the first and I wouldn't be the last, so why was I the one getting almost-possessed by a church and having dead animals planted in my apartment like Christmas gifts? It wasn't fair.
“Hey, don't cry,” Max pulled me in for a hug. He smelled nice. Like soap. A pleasant change from blood and death. But that didn't mean I wanted him hugging me.
“I'm not,” I said, pushing myself upright. Wiping my traitorous tears away, I squared my shoulders and lifted my chin a defiant fraction. Beatrice Todd didn't cry. Not where other people could see her do it, at least.
...But, God, was it tempting. The safe little lifeboat I managed to crawl my way onto was really starting to take on water. Demons weren't just creatures who lurked in alleyways anymore. They didn’t exist solely in memories of my parents, in breaking newscasts or Rosie’s frail body. They were way, way too real and they were getting too close for comfort.
How could I be so stupid?
Aralia's boots clicked across the floor. “Beatrice, you mentioned you heard a scratching noise last night?”
I nodded.
“Then you might want to see this.”
Hurray. More encouraging news. I wondered what horror awaited me behin
d door number two! I tried to appear as calm as possible as I got to my feet and turned around.
Claw marks, dozens of them gouged in the surface of the far wall. Proof that I wasn't paranoid or crazy. I shuddered to think what would have happened if I'd gone to investigate.
Dante, who'd been standing there in his typical strong-but-silent type way, looked up at the ceiling, then back to me and Max. “Don't you have class?”
“No,” we said in unison.
I nudged Max with my shoulder. “Yeah, Max, don't you have class?”
“Not until tonight,” he replied, nudging me in return. “Don't you have class?”
Dante reached into the pocket of his coat and tossed a set of keys to Max. “Take Beatrice to school. We'll handle things here.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. He should have known better than to order me around. “I can't leave.”
“Why not?” He sounded serious.
The gossip magazines would've been heartbroken to know that Dante Arturo, hero of the people, wasn't actually good at people. He sucked at social cues. “Because this is my apartment. All my stuff is here. No offense, but I'd rather not leave the two of you here with all my, uh, business.”
Like the thongs Rosie bought me as a joke for my birthday last year. Why hadn't I burned those yet?
“I assure you, Beatrice, I have no interest in your personal life,” Dante said flatly. He glanced at Max. “Go and come back here after you're done.”
Max started to leave, but I put a hand out and gave him a little push back toward the couch.
“Hold on,” I said, glaring at Dante. “I'm not a piece of furniture. You can't just send me away when you're done with me.”
Max's mouth fell open. Dante's did the opposite. A muscle jumped in his scruffy jaw. “Excuse me?”
I couldn't decide if I was angry or overwhelmed or both. I went with both. “Look, Dante, I really appreciate that you came over and I really appreciate that you keep helping me, but I'm not a couch and I'm not a dog. You can't just order me around and you shouldn't do that to Max, either.”
Silence settled over the room like a heavy blanket. Intimidating as he was, I forced myself to hold Dante's gaze. He wouldn't respect me if I backed down now, and for one reason or another, I wanted his respect. I wanted him to see me as more than a bratty orphan who kept abusing her phone privileges. I wanted him to...like me. Or, at the very least, tolerate me.
“It isn't safe for you here,” he said. He was proving himself to be quite the stubborn superhero. “And you need to go to school.”
I sighed. Another useless argument, starring Dante Arturo and Beatrice Todd. He was right, though. It wasn't safe for me here. Not by a long shot. I didn't have anywhere else to go, but I couldn't stay here unless I wanted to become a corpse. At least I wouldn't be giving Marion the satisfaction of evicting me. And, you know, I guess I had to go to school.
“Fine,” I said. “I'll go, but not because you told me to.”
He looked vaguely amused by that. “Of course not.”
It took every scrap of restraint I had not to roll my eyes as I slung my backpack over my shoulder. I hoped I had everything I needed. If I didn't? Oh well. I already had detention. What was Headmaster Vance going to do? Ground me?
Max and I were on our way out the door when Dante's hand caught my wrist. I stiffened. It was warm, made rough by years of hard work. But it wasn't like the movies. I didn't feel electricity where our skin met. Time didn't slow to a grinding halt. It was just a hand. A hand I wanted to slap off.
I looked over my shoulder. “What?”
His lips parted as though he had something meaningful to say, but instead of saying it, he only dropped his hand and grimaced. “Have a nice day, Beatrice. And wipe the blood off your face.”
Seven
The sun was out and the sky was blue for the second day in dreary Stone Chapel. That had to be a new record. I sat in the passenger's seat of Dante's sleek car while Max drove me to the severe turreted building that was the city's esteemed high school. It would've been a relatively short ride if I hadn't begged him to take the long way.
“Dante isn't a bad guy,” he said as we drove past the docks. The ocean rocked lazily against the shore. “He just doesn't get a lot of...social interaction.”
I doused a tissue I found in my backpack with a mini bottle of hand sanitizer Max found in the glove department and wiped my face. Not an ideal solution, but it'd have to do. “What does he do all day? Hunt demons and brood?”
Max laughed. “You'd be surprised. If you ask me, he doesn't do enough for himself. He's all about the cause.”
“The cause?” I balled the tissue up and stuffed it in the cup holder. A little something for Dante to remember me by.
“Yeah, y'know...The fight against evil and all that.” He shrugged. “I don't think I've ever met anyone so dedicated to his job.”
And the world was better for it. Dante saved countless lives over the years. He did what no one else seemed to be able to. Despite being overbearing, the fact that a lot of people still viewed him as some harbinger from Lucifer pissed me off. Especially now that I'd gotten to know him. Sort of. “How'd you join up with him anyway?”
“He was my professor for awhile,” Max said.
“Your professor?” This was new.
“Yeah, he wasn't permanent, but he taught a class on demonology over at Cromwell a couple of semesters ago. I had to wait in line for three hours to sign up, but it was worth it.”
Cromwell University, named after the city's founder, was Stone Chapel's second claim to fame. It was all the way on the other side of town. I didn't get over there very often, but from what I'd seen, it looked like the Vatican and featured a giant statue of the archangel Gabriel in the middle of campus. It was foremost in demonic research, so I guess it made sense that Dante taught there. Made me wonder what kind of professor he was. Probably the type who made the final exam worth half your grade.
“I take it you liked it, then?” I asked. The pointed spires of the church peeked up out of the skyline, omnipresent. I looked away.
Max took a right down Ballard Street. We were nearing the high school. “Yeah, it was amazing. Dante was really good, believe it or not. That lecture hall was packed every day.”
“Were you the teacher's pet or something?”
He gave his glasses a bashful nudge, shrugging again. “More like the annoying guy who asked questions every ten seconds. I never shut up.”
So Max was one of those people. Good to know. “I'll bet Dante enjoyed that.”
“I think he did. A lot of people were too afraid to do anything but stare at him, so I took it upon myself to be that guy.”
Another right turn and we were pulling up to the high school. I told him to park across the street. I was already two hours late. A few more minutes wouldn’t hurt.
“I created Armageddon Now during Christmas break,” Max said when we were stopped. “I like your handle on there, by the way. Very cool.”
I was glad someone got the reference. “Thanks. Yours is kind of boring, though.”
“Hey, it was the only thing I could think of at the time.” He paused, his grin lessening. “But, yeah, I created it after my dad died and—...”
“Oh.” That wasn't what I was expecting. “Sorry.”
“It's okay.” He tried smiling again. It didn't work. “Anyway, uh―...It was just me and mom. Until Dante gave me a call. Guess he noticed the website and remembered me from class. Offered me a deal.”
Oh, so he'll offer Max a deal, but he won't offer me one. Unfair. “And?”
“He wanted me to work for him. Keep putting the truth out there. In exchange, he'd help me and my mom with the bills and stuff. Hell, he paid off my tuition.”
“Wow,” I said, thinking of the check I'd received in the mail. “That's...generous.”
“Yeah, no kidding. I told him not do, but he insisted, so.” He shrugged again. “Here I am.”
“Do y
ou live with him?”
“Sort of? Mom lives in Vermont. I moved up here for school, but I'm a junior so I'm not required to live on campus.”
A flock of sparrows gathered around a puddle in the sidewalk next to the car. They flapped around, minding their own business, and then, out of nowhere, a crow landed and the sparrows scattered in a twittering flurry.
Wow. Crows were jerks.
I turned back to Max. “So...you do?”
He drummed his fingers along the leathery surface of the steering wheel. “Yeah, I guess. It's pretty cool. Way better than a dorm room.”
Huh. Interesting. Maybe if I batted my eyelashes and asked a ton of questions, Dante would let me move in, too. Of course, that would mean giving up my luxury apartment. “What about Aralia? What's her deal?”
“I have no idea,” he said. “I've been working with the two of them for months now and I can't figure her out. I'm not even sure what she does, y'know? I do the tech stuff, Dante's the hunter...but Aralia? I don't know.”
Another mystery I had yet to unravel. Unfortunately, it would have to wait until after school. I sighed, opening the door. “I'd better go. My next class starts in like fifteen minutes. Ms. Kepler is a stickler for punctuality and I've already got detention.”
“Detention?” Max said. “For what?”
I got out of the car. “Punching someone.”
He lifted a brow. “Damn. You're hardcore, Todd.”
“You know it.”
We said our goodbyes and he drove off in the direction of my apartment, leaving me to face my figurative doom. Alone. In my pajamas.
***
Headmaster Vance pulled me into his office after Ms. Kepler's biology class and freaked out over my being late, then proceeded to chastise my choice in clothing. I tried to explain what happened in less...creepy terms, but he wasn't having any of it and ordered me to spend my lunch period in the library with my new best friend, Ms. Hayworth.
It occurred to me when I walked through the door that I'd never really talked to her before. I only came in here when I had to. She didn't seem to mind, though.
