Turned

by Julie Kenner

  “Antonio?” I asked, but I feared I knew. I’d killed Father Carlton, but not all of the men in that room had died. Antonio, I assumed, I’d merely injured.

  “He was there. Do you deny the things he said you did?”

  “I don’t know Antonio. I don’t know what he says I did. But I do not deny it.”

  His face turned hard. “Go.”

  I leaned closer. “I have to fix it. Don’t you see? I have to make it right.” I squeezed my eyes together, mortified to realize that I was on the verge of tears. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t understand the consequences.”

  “Bad,” he said, his voice starting to lose its focus again. “Bad consequences.”

  “Yeah. You could say that. Can you help me? Will you help me?”

  His head tilted as he looked me up and down. I tried to look innocent and trustworthy, but I’m not really sure that I managed. “They play tricks, you know,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “Demons.”

  I leaned back, eyeing him warily. “Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

  “Make you walk through fire. Make you suffer. Gotta stand strong. Can’t fail. Fail and you burn. Faith, child. Call upon the saints and angels when you have need, but in the end, it’s faith that makes you strong.”

  “I know,” I admitted. “And I’m finding it little by little. But right now I need to find the key. Will you help me? Can you help me?”

  “Tricky they are, the devils. Come like a beautiful woman. Come like an innocent child. Tell you they need help, they will. Tell you they need to close the gate, when all they really want is to hide the key and keep it open forever.”

  “That’s not me,” I said.

  He looked up, all confusion erased from his expression. “How do I know?”

  I felt the weight of the Oris Clef against my neck. And though my head told me not to reveal it, my heart pressed me onward. Faith. Just have faith.

  “This,” I finally said, closing my hand around the necklace. “Do you know what this is?”

  He leaned forward, then pulled a pair of glasses from the breast pocket of his robe. He put them on, squinted through the lenses, then gasped.

  “You know it?” I asked. “Tell me what it is.”

  “Temptation,” he breathed.

  “The Oris Clef,” I said, ignoring the fact that he’d spoken the utter truth. “Do you know what it does?”

  “I’ve only seen pictures. Sketches. The roughest of descriptions.” He reached for it, and I eased backward. “How—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “The point is I can lock the gate open if I want to. And if I wanted to, I wouldn’t care about the Box of Shankara or any other key.” I pressed my hand over the necklace. “This is my trump card. Which means that if I’m looking for the Box of Shankara—if I’m looking for another way to lock the gate—it must be because I want to use it, not destroy it.”

  “Perhaps,” he said. “And perhaps it doesn’t matter what you say.”

  “Dammit!” My temper flared, and it was all I could do not to leap out of the chair and shake the old man until he told me what I needed to know. “Do you know what’s going to happen if I don’t find this key?” I clenched my fists, my jaw tight, trying to rein in my temper. “Just tell me this—is there another key? A physical key? Something I could pick up and hold in my hand?” Something, I wanted to ask, that wasn’t me.

  “I do not know,” he said, then cringed back as if expecting a blow. Dammit all, I’d gone and scared a priest. Which, I’m pretty sure, is way up there on the major-sin scale. Pretty much my only way into heaven was this saving-the-world gig, and so far I was busted flat on that one. Especially if what he was saying was true. Because if he didn’t know, then I had no idea who would.

  “What about Antonio? The one who helped Father Carlton? Can we ask him?”

  “Dead,” the monsignor said, then crossed himself. “Run down in the street. Hit-and-run, the police said, but I know that wasn’t so. They wanted to make sure. Wanted to make sure no one could follow in Father Carlton’s footsteps.”

  I didn’t have to ask who “they” were. Demons.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “A good man, he was. Man of God. Wouldn’t have helped you, though. Didn’t know a thing. Not about that. Not about the other key. About the way to lock the gate up tight.” He blinked up at me. “It’s coming, you know. Soon the gate will open, and—”

  “Yeah. I’m kind of hoping we never get to and.” I scooted my chair even closer. Any more, and I would be sitting in his lap. “Antonio didn’t know, but you do. Don’t you?”

  “Not much,” he said. “I don’t know much.”

  “Will you tell me what you do know?”

  He blinked, his expression clouding again. “About what? What were we talking about?”

  “The gate,” I said. “We need to lock the gate to hell. And I need your help.”

  “That’s what she had, I think. The key. The missing key.”

  “She?”

  “Must have been destroyed when he killed her. That’s why he killed her, after all.”

  My head was spinning trying to follow his thoughts. “Who? What are you talking about?”

  “Beautiful, she was. Like you. And there was such a light in her. Light that not even the darkness around her could smother.”

  I opened my mouth to ask once again what the bloody hell he was talking about, but then I snapped it shut. What he was saying . . . There was something so very familiar about his words. “What happened to her?”

  “She came to me. I was her confessor. Traveled all this way from Boarhurst. Said she liked us here at St. Jerome’s, but I think she was afraid to go into church near where she lived.”

  “Why?” I whispered. “Why would she be afraid?”

  “The things she saw in her life were bad enough, but she had visions. Horrible visions.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of this,” he said. “Of the gate. Of the demons rushing through. And she believed—oh, how she believed.”

  “In what?”

  “In her blood,” he said, looking up at me. “She said that her blood would seal the gate.”

  I blanched. “Her blood? Was it blood—her daughter’s blood—that would seal it?” Please, no. Please, please God, let there be another.

  “Daughter?” He shook his head, as if trying to process the meaning of the word. “No. No, it was an athame. A knife.”

  “Where?” I said, practically pouncing in my eagerness. “Where is it?”

  But he didn’t answer. He just shook his head in a manner that suggested everything was lost. “Gone,” he said. “Probably got it when they got her. Killed her, you know. I’m certain of it.”

  “But you said blood. What did you mean by blood?”

  “She was afraid, so very afraid that the line wouldn’t survive.”

  “I don’t understand. Her line?”

  “Her bloodline. It was her daughter. Her daughter who she believed would wield the blade and shut the gate.”

  I could feel myself grow pale. “How long ago was this?”

  I watched as he mentally calculated. “Must have been ten, twelve years ago.”

  “And the woman’s name?”

  “Margaret,” he said. “Margaret Purdue.”

  TWELVE

  “She knew,” I said, pacing in front of the couch in Rachel’s new apartment. “Your mom knew.”

  “But what did she know?” Rachel asked. Deacon and I had returned to the pub after my meeting with the monsignor, only to find that both Rose and Rachel were asleep. I’d let them stay that way for a while, figuring that with everything that was soon going to be facing us, they would need the rest. But by four in the morning, I couldn’t stand it anymore. We were technically on day three now, and counting down fast. I’d shaken both of them awake, and after coffee and Diet Coke, they were both semiconscious and blinking at me, their faces still soft with
sleep.

  “Everything. Don’t you see? He said the key was a knife, and he learned that from Margaret.”

  “So my mom actually had the key?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, frowning. “The monsignor seems to think she did, because he said they took it.” I closed my eyes, trying to remember exactly what he’d said. “He said that they must have taken it when they killed her.”

  “I think he’s wrong,” Deacon said. He was standing by the window, still wearing the jacket, and the street-light floating in from outside cast him in an eerie glow. “I would have heard. There would have been much rumbling in the demonic community if one of the gate keys had been found and destroyed.”

  “So that means she didn’t have it,” Rose said.

  “Or it means she hid it,” Rachel put in.

  “That’s exactly what I’m thinking.” I reached up to the neck of the clean tank top I’d grabbed from the top of Rachel’s laundry basket. I pulled it down, exposing the edge of my bra, and the small tattoo of a knife. “A message, maybe? To let Alice know.”

  “Alice was only a kid when Mom made her get that tattoo.”

  “I think your mom was covering her bases. Leaving Alice a clue in case something happened to her. Because she knew it was Alice who would close the gate.” At that, I glanced toward Deacon, but his attention was elsewhere. “Or she knew it looked like Alice, anyway.”

  “But that explains it, then,” Rose said. “Why they killed her, I mean. We’ve always wondered about why Alice, and that’s it, right? Because they couldn’t risk her finding the knife and shutting the gate.”

  “Yeah,” I said, sitting on the coffee table. “I think you’re right. But we still don’t know why me.”

  “Does it matter?” Deacon asked. “The reasons don’t change the reality. It is you. And there’s nothing you can do now to change that.”

  “I know. I just—” I cut myself off, noticing the way Rachel was eyeing Rose. It was a big-sister look that I was more than familiar with, and I wondered why it was being issued by Rachel instead of by me. “Got something you two want to share with the class?”

  Rose tensed up immediately, shifting around so that she was facing forward, hands on her knees. “No. Nothing. I’m good.”

  Rachel reached over and took her hand. “Tell her.”

  “It’s not import—”

  “You told me,” Rachel said. “But she’s the one who should know.”

  “Whatever it is,” I said. “Tell me.” And why, I wondered, did Rachel know and not me? Rose was my sister, after all.

  “It’s just that I know. Why you, I mean. I know why the demons used you.”

  “Oh.” I don’t know what I’d expected her to say, but it wasn’t that. “How?” As I asked, Deacon moved away from the window, crossing like a cat through shadows to stand beside me. His presence should have calmed me. Instead, it made me more wary.

  “From before,” Rose said, pulling her feet up and hugging her knees. She still wore what she’d slept in, an oversized T-shirt and loose leggings, and she looked small, fragile, and absolutely miserable. “From when he was inside me.”

  “Oh.” The he she referred to was Lucas Johnson, of course. The he who had screwed up both our lives. “So what exactly did you learn?” I asked, not at all certain I really wanted to know.

  Once again, Rose’s eyes darted to Rachel. “Go ahead, honey,” Rachel said. “She has a right to know.”

  Rose licked her lips, then nodded. “I was in there, you know, with him. And most of the time I didn’t know what was going on. I was just, I don’t know, floating or something. Like when you’re half-asleep and things are happening around you and you don’t understand what’s going on.”

  “Okay,” I said, not the least bit sure what this had to do with me.

  “But sometimes he dropped his guard, and I could get a peek inside him.” She closed her eyes and breathed in hard through her nose. “I didn’t really want to. It was—gross. And scary. And—”

  “But you saw something?”

  She nodded. “I didn’t see so much as knew. Like all of a sudden what was in his head was in mine, too.”

  “What?”

  “He made you. Not just as Alice, but as Lily, too.” She reached over and squeezed Rachel’s hand. “He made you, and then when he and Kokbiel saw the chance to make you the girl in the prophecy, they jumped all over it. I was only a way to get to you. So you’d go after him. So you’d die and all this . . . stuff would happen.”

  “Back up,” I said, suddenly very afraid. “What are you talking about? What do you mean, he made me?”

  “Mom,” she whispered, as a tear trickled from her eye. “He slept with Mom.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head and backing away. Deacon’s arm went tight around me. “No. He’s not. He can’t be—”

  “He is,” she said. “Lucas Johnson’s your father.”

  THIRTEEN

  “No,” I said, nausea rising in me. “No way. He’s not my father. That son of a bitch doesn’t have a thing to do with me.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Rachel said, leaning toward me. “I know a little bit about having a family that touches up against the dark. And it doesn’t matter. You make yourself, Lily. It’s not about who your father or your mother or your asshole uncle is.”

  But I wasn’t listening. I was pacing. My mind whirling, my body hot with the fear that comes with having your entire sense of self shifted. I know a little about that—what with getting dumped into a new body and all—but this was different. Then, at least, I knew who I was at the core, even if the package had changed. Now I wasn’t even sure about that.

  “I’m not a demon,” I said. “I can’t be part demon.”

  “You’re not,” Deacon said firmly, moving to my side. “He took human form to be with your mother. You’re human, Lily, and you always have been.”

  We both knew that wasn’t really true. The prophecy had changed me, and with every demon I killed, I lost a little bit of that humanity. But I’d always believed I’d started from a clean slate.

  Okay, that wasn’t true either. The old Lily had been far from a saint. I’d do whatever it took to make a buck—steal or deal—but it was always so that I could take care of my little sister. And I’d never really felt a sense of wrong until Johnson had touched her. Before that, it had always been about what was easiest. I’d learned better, of course, yet I was still shying away from the hard choices.

  “Does it matter?” Deacon said. “Does it matter where you came from?” He looked hard at me, and I knew what he was thinking. If it mattered that I was demon spawn, then he was screwed, too. Because he’d come from the depths of hell and wanted desperately to have the doors of heaven thrown open for him. So far, he hadn’t earned his way in. And I had to wonder—was that because of what he’d done or because of what he was?

  If the latter, then I was screwed, too.

  “It matters,” I said. I moved to the window and pressed my hands against the glass, looking down at the street, now starting to come to life with the approaching dawn. “The creature I hate most in all the world is part of me. His blackness. His vileness. And there’s nothing I can do. No way I can make that not be so.”

  I felt someone step up beside me, and turned to see that it was Rose. She reached out and took my hand. “I know,” she said simply. And the soft cadence of her voice shamed me. I might have been born of him, but she’d suffered under him. He’d been in her, too. Physically. Spiritually. He’d raped her, body and soul, and between the two of us, I had to acknowledge that she’d gotten the bitter end of Lucas Johnson.

  I looked at her, standing taller and more confident than I’d seen her in a year. She’d survived Johnson’s mark, and I couldn’t be more proud.

  She’d survived, and so could I.

  I squeezed her hand, then let go, turning to face the room. “I’ve been their damn puppet,” I said. “The demons. Kokbiel.” I shivered. So far, Kokbi
el had done all his dirty work through Johnson, and although I’d seen a hefty chunk of Penemue, I had yet to view his enemy, Kokbiel. I can’t say that I was looking forward to making his acquaintance.

  I breathed in through clenched teeth, thinking about what Kokbiel and Lucas had been doing. “They’ve been pulling strings since before I was born.”

  “Lily—” I held up a hand to stop Deacon.

  “No. It’s okay. I’m just making a point. I’ve been their puppet,” I started again. “But they never expected me to turn, right? To figure out I was being used and start fighting to close the gate? So I got in a solid punch. And they never expected us to get Johnson out of Rose. Another solid punch to the jaw. Now I’m going to kick them in the nuts, and hard.”

  “Good girl,” Rachel said, the corner of her mouth twitching. “How?”

  “By finding the thing they don’t want us to find.” I looked at each of them in turn. Deacon, dark and silent, as he watched me. Rose, moving to settle again beside Rachel, her expression open and curious, her sleep-tousled pink hair standing on end. Rachel, leaning forward, eager to hear and to help.

  “The knife,” Rose said.

  “Right. They killed Alice because they believed she could close the gate. But she couldn’t do that unless she had the key to lock it with.” I looked at Rose, my prize pupil. “The knife. And that means that the monsignor was wrong. The demons didn’t destroy the knife when they had Egan kill Margaret. Because if they had, then Alice would have been no danger to them, right?”

  I looked to Deacon, and he nodded in agreement.

  “So it still exists,” Rachel said.

  “The problem is where,” I admitted. “The world’s a big place.”

  “But it’s not in the world,” Rose said. “Right? Because you tried to find it using your arm, and you couldn’t.”

  I had to agree. I was still new to the whole magical, mystery-arm-tour thing, but I’d at least managed to harness how it works. I’d cast out to find the key to lock the gates and discovered nothing. That didn’t mean the thing didn’t exist; instead, it meant that the thing didn’t exist in the earthly dimension.