Gorgon

by Chloe Garner

  “What happened?” the other demon called. The demon Sam could see rolled over, gagging and wretching. He coughed some more, then looked up, tried to answer, and gagged, coughing again.

  “You okay?” the other demon called, coming into view. Sam braced once more, but he remained invisible.

  It seemed obvious, at this point, that the white powder on the floor was doing more than just marking out as far as Sam was allowed to go.

  He should have seen that coming.

  Or not.

  How in hell had a pair of demons gotten in here?

  “I bet that’s her room,” the one who could still speak said. The other one gagged, crawling further out of the blast radius of powder.

  The one who was upright went and tried Samantha’s door, but it didn’t budge. He shoved his weight against it, and still nothing happened. He took the axe from the crawling demon and took a full swing at it, but it simply bounced off the wood door, jarring the demon pretty hard.

  He cursed, taking another swing. He glitched, going wobbly for a fraction of a second, then shaking his head as if to clear it.

  “She’s got better locks than he does,” the demon said. The other one seemed to be gargling on his own fluids.

  “I’m going to see what else I can find in his room. You just…” He shook his head. “Yeah.”

  The crawling demon collapsed onto the floor, quivering. Sam watched, unable to come up with anything better to do, as the first demon proceeded to loot Carter’s apartment while the second one slowly liquefied.

  Maybe twenty minutes later, it was over. The one demon was a stain on the wood floor and the other one disappeared and didn’t appear he was going to come back. Thirty minutes later, Carter returned.

  “Well, at least I got one of them,” he said, looking around with his hands on his hips.

  “How do you know there were more than one of them?” Sam asked. Carter raised an eyebrow at him.

  “Because I’m assuming you didn’t just decide to eat my collection of frog vomit,” Carter said. Sam hesitated.

  “Are you talking about actual frog vomit, or is that another weird herb?”

  “You know how a frog throws up?” Carter asked.

  “No,” Sam said, disgusted. Carter wiggled his eyebrows once, then sighed.

  “Well, did you find it?”

  “What?” Sam asked. Carter tipped his head slightly to the side, as if Sam were dumb, and Sam gasped. “Oh. Um. Yeah.”

  “About time,” Carter answered.

  <><><>

  “Sam?” Kara asked, opening the door quietly. “Jason woke up this morning and said he’s out of it. Do I go through his notebook or something?”

  Samantha didn’t turn from looking out the window. She was ached out, calm.

  “Some people can tell and some can’t,” she said. “Ask Kelly. I think he’ll know.”

  “Okay,” Kara said and started to close the door.

  “Tell everyone we’re leaving today,” Samantha said. “I’m going to go get Sam.”

  “Is he done?” Kara asked.

  “Yes.”

  There was a pause.

  “How do you know?”

  “We talked last night,” Samantha said, looking down at the pin in her lap. It hurt, but she was too weary for it to bother her as much as it normally would. It felt good to have the connection to Sam again. “We’ll stop by the mansion on the way south and get Abby.”

  “I’m glad, Sam,” Kara said, closing the door.

  <><><>

  It was with no small eagerness that Samantha pushed the button on the elevator to go up to Carter’s apartment. She was here, and Sam was just upstairs.

  It was over.

  The doors opened and she held herself back to keep from rushing down the hallway and pushing the heavy, knobless door open.

  She was still weak, but she healed faster than a normal person. Plus she was stubborn. No one had been able to talk her out of driving, including Abby.

  She entered Carter’s apartment and stopped dead.

  Sam was squatted in the corner, wearing a collar with a chain.

  “No,” she said. “No, he didn’t do that to you.”

  “Morning,” Carter said from the kitchen, not looking up from his bowl of cereal.

  She ran across the front room of the apartment, stopping at the line of dust.

  “You have fifteen seconds,” she said, livid.

  “For his own good,” Carter said, slurping milk off his chin. She turned, glaring. “He had to stay in there, and he’d never have taken my word for it.”

  “Why?” Samantha demanded, voice deep.

  “Because they broke in. The evidence is there under your feet.”

  She looked down at the wood floor and found the stain there.

  “What happened?” she asked, looking at Sam.

  “A couple of demons showed up,” he said, motioning at a hole in the wall she’d failed to notice. “That blew up and did… that.”

  “Demons?” she asked, spinning again. “In here?”

  “Told you he wouldn’t have taken my word for it,” Carter said.

  “You chained him to the corner,” Samantha said, still too angry to give him the benefit of anything.

  “It had to be small and out of the way or else they’d have found him,” Carter said. “It’s not a force field.”

  He set down his bowl and put an arm out. For a moment, Samantha had no idea what he intended to communicate, then Abby shyly stepped forward and went to stand next to him.

  He rested his arm around her hips, and for a fraction of a second, he might have looked bashful.

  “No,” Samantha said. She stared Abby down and was astonished, almost speechless, to see her friend blush. “No, I’m too busy being mad at you to deal with that.”

  “Oh, you’re just going to get madder,” Carter said quietly as Samantha crossed the line and put a finger to the metal collar around Sam’s neck. It clicked open easily and Sam rubbed his hands over the raw skin there.

  “Good morning, Sam,” a silky voice said. Sam stiffened, surprise, not fear, and Samantha turned slowly at the familiar voice.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked Nuri.

  “We thought you would take it best from me,” Nuri said, easing across the room to sit down on the couch.

  “Take what?” Samantha asked, standing against Sam just for the familiarity of it. Nuri drew a breath and looked casually at Carter, then turned back to Samantha.

  “Things you need to know, but aren’t going to like.”

  “How are you here?” Samantha asked. “You can’t get in here.”

  Nuri smiled.

  “Anyone could get in here, right now, if you know where the right buttons are. He’s broken.”

  “He’s what?” Samantha asked, looking at Carter again. He shrugged.

  “One thing at a time.”

  “Okay,” Samantha said, looking back at Nuri.

  “I’m the one who took her,” Nuri said.

  “Took who?” Samantha asked, then she heard Isobel draw breath.

  Betrayal.

  Shocking, cold betrayal. Sam was no more prepared for it than Samantha was.

  “Why?” she asked a moment later. Nuri had clearly been waiting for her to figure it out.

  “Because,” Nuri said simply. “I needed to know, and so did both of you. And it was the only way.”

  “But you sent Kjarr to help us,” Jason said.

  “Welcome back,” Nuri said. “I sent Kjarr to keep you safe, and to make sure I won.”

  Samantha stared hard at the woman she had considered her friend.

  Almost a mother.

  “How could you?” Samantha asked.

  “It isn’t the first time I’ve threatened someone you cared about,” Nuri said, eyes flicking to Carter. Samantha hadn’t needed the clue.

  “But we had a contract,” Samantha said.

  “Because you saw it coming,” Nuri said. �
��You had no idea what she was. Still don’t, I believe, but at least now you’re asking the right questions.”

  “What am I?” Isobel asked. Nuri reclined deeper into the couch.

  “They misunderstood, when we called you ghar’gahn. They thought we were talking about the angels who protected you. You are a gorgon, the most powerful to ever exist, and no one remembers what that means, except me. You have much to learn.”

  “How could you?” Samantha asked, still cold.

  “I’m a demon, Sam. And you’re playing at a new level. You need to understand that.”

  “What about Benjamin?” Samantha asked. “What you did to him?”

  Nuri waved a hand casually.

  “He assembled magic to keep a human away from you so I could torture her. Are you really that concerned about what happened to him?”

  Samantha stared, furious and dumbfounded. Nuri sighed.

  “If it makes you feel any better, it wasn’t my plan. I couldn’t get that close to any of it, because you would sense my magic and get sidetracked at a time when you could little afford it. I entrusted the work to cooperatives who are also demons. This is the nature of our world, Sam. There are no soft edges on it.”

  “Get out,” Samantha whispered. Nuri inclined her head gently and vanished. Samantha forced herself to breathe.

  She’d trusted the woman.

  More than that. She’d had sincere feelings of affection for her.

  She knew Carter was watching her. Didn’t want to deal with that.

  “I need to get started fixing everything they broke,” Carter said, unaffected. “So if you don’t mind leaving.”

  “You’re a real tool, man,” Jason said. Carter shrugged, eyes amused, but Samantha knew it was a mercy. She didn’t have to talk to him about it. Not now. Not yet. She pressed her face against Sam’s chest, then nodded.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “Let’s just go.”

  <><><>

  Samantha sat on her chair in the great room, trying to keep her thoughts going in an order that made sense. There was too much, and she needed time. Everyone seemed to understand that, and they let her be. Sam was around, his mind brushing up against her own, but quiet.

  She became aware that someone else was in the room, though when she turned her head, she had no idea how long Isobel had been there.

  “Why did he take Sam?” Isobel asked. “Because Sam was expendable to him and Abby was not?”

  “Maybe,” Samantha said. “More because a lot of his enemies know how to find her, and they would have known she was in the apartment. It would be a lot harder to hide her.”

  Isobel came to sit in the other chair, nodding slowly.

  “He is… an interesting man,” she said. “I’ve never met one like him.”

  “No,” Samantha said. “There’s never been one like him.”

  “I’m a gorgon,” Isobel said. “It seems like that should be profound but it’s just another word.”

  “Ghar’ghan means flame-touched. It’s the word they use to describe self-immolation and hellbound, but it can also refer to someone who’s insightful or protected by an angel. A powerful angel can do a lot of damage to a demon with just a touch, and it usually manifests in flame.”

  Isobel shifted, watching Samantha for a moment.

  “Why are you uncomfortable with him?” she finally asked.

  “Who? Carter?”

  “Sam,” Isobel said.

  “What?” Samantha asked, taken aback. She searched, but she couldn’t find what Isobel was talking about. Isobel was slow to answer.

  “You love him. I have no doubt about that. But… I’ve known a great number of women going into young relationships like yours, and there’s something about the way you hold yourself. Just a little bit apart.”

  Samantha opened and closed her mouth.

  Twice.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she finally said. Isobel nodded.

  “Of course you don’t. That’s part of it. I just… I want to say it so that you can hear it. Raef is gone. I will never see him again, and I will never touch him again. You’re losing something that you could have, just by claiming it, in holding yourself away from him like that.”

  Samantha looked away, feeling heat on her face.

  Isobel stood.

  “You are very strong. Perhaps the strongest woman I’ve known. But you hold yourself like you might break, and I suspect you’re wrong.”

  It had been months. She thought she’d gotten to a point where normal was okay. That’s what she kept telling herself, anyway. It was a lie.

  It was a lie, every time.

  Isobel left quietly and Samantha looked after her for a minute, hoping no one else could see it.

  “Mistress?” Maryann asked. Samantha turned.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I heard you found the demon you were looking for,” Maryann said, “so I went back to an old project. I found her.”

  “Who?” Samantha asked.

  “The psychic who opened the hellgate in Houston.”

  <><><>

  Bethany stood over the growing pile of soul-vested things the demons had stolen from Samantha for her. The magic she’d accumulated here was powerful enough that she had a hard time getting close to it without seeing her. Even around the hair pin, even around the warding on the stone house in Vermont, when Bethany got close to the shrine, she saw Samantha.

  Bethany was twelve, the daughter of a powerful sorceress. She’d learned copious amounts of dark magic at her mother’s knee before the woman had indentured her. A psychic trained in dark magic from a young age, Bethany was a valuable commodity, and her mother had been compensated well. Bethany had not.

  She’d been possessed three times, already, and it had only been after intense, angry, frustrating negotiation that she had won freedom from another possession, by agreeing to do whatever she was told.

  She was an expert on Renouch, a sought-after young woman, and she’d changed hands four times since Cassie had vanished. She did what she was told, and she watched.

  She didn’t tell.

  No.

  She didn’t tell them everything.

  END OF BOOK SEVEN

  Thank you for reading Gorgon, book seven of the Sam and Sam series by Chloe Garner. The next book in the series, Gone To Ground, should be out in 2019 but for now check out Book of Carter or the Gypsy Queen Series.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Chloe Garner is a wanderer with a host of identities in her head fighting each other to get out. Chloe writes about the things that go bump in the night, the future, and all things fantastical. Find her on Twitter as BlenderFiction, on Goodreads and Facebook as Chloe Garner, or at blenderfiction.wordpress.com.

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