by John Everson
“Have you always lived in Santa Fe?” Joe asked.
Cheyenne shook her head. “No,” she said. “I grew up in Albuquerque. And I guess I was made in Wyoming. My parents took a road trip when they were in college and spent the night in Cheyenne. They said there was nothing else to do there, so that’s how I got made.”
Joe laughed. “Nice. Any brothers or sisters?”
“Yeah, I’m the oldest of four. Three girls and one brother. He never used any of our hand-me-downs, though mom sure tried to get him to.”
“Are they named after state capitals too? Austin, Juneau, Madison?”
“Ha!” Cheyenne said. “Nope, just boring names. Jamie, Carol and Mike.”
“You’re the oldest?”
“Yep. I’m the big sister and big example. So as soon as I took a few classes at community college, I decided to ditch the rest of ’em and moved up here to start my exciting new life as a bar waitress. I have aspirations to one day become a restaurant hostess. I gotta show the kids that you really can grow up to be anything you want.”
“Uh-huh,” he said. “So what really happened?”
“My dad’s an asshole and I got sick of listening to his bullshit about going to college and becoming a nurse or something. So one day I packed a bunch of stuff and caught one of the Roadrunner shuttles up here. And I’ve never gone back.”
“You ever see your sisters or brother?” he asked.
Cheyenne shook her head. “They don’t have any idea where I’m at. And I’m keeping it that way.”
Joe raised an eyebrow. Somehow, this situation sounded like there was something more serious at the core than just a dad blowing bullshit.
“So, how long have you been up here?” he asked.
“Six years in August,” she said.
“That’s a long time not to talk to your family.”
She snorted. “Best six years of my life. Even if I am still just waitressing!”
“Have you met anyone here?” he asked.
“You mean a boyfriend?”
“Yeah.”
“Nope, I’ve kept myself free and single. Never know when you might have to move on, ya know. Why, are you interested now that you’ve had time to check out the merchandise? Earlier you said you absolutely weren’t.”
It was Joe’s turn to laugh.
“I’ve moved on quite a bit myself,” he said. “Speaking of which, since you’ve lived here more than a week, do you have any idea how long it will take us get back to town from here?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t come out here much so I’m not really sure how far we’ve come. Maybe another hour?”
The headlights of a car suddenly popped out of the darkness from the direction of the Birchmir.
“Maybe we won’t have to walk it though,” she said and turned in the direction of the lights. Cheyenne put her thumb out in the universal sign for “hitchhiker” and then crooked her knee as if she was hiking up a skirt. “Do you think I’m showing enough leg to get us a ride?”
“I think you’re showing enough everything,” Joe said. “When they see me, they might keep going though.”
Just then Joe noticed another pair of lights behind the first. And then a third. His stomach suddenly turned to ice.
“Get down,” he said, and grabbed her arm.
“Why?” Cheyenne asked, but he yanked her down into the gully next to the road.
“Down,” he insisted. He pulled her down to lie on the dusty hill that sloped away from the asphalt. The headlights closed the gap fast. But once they were almost upon them, the car began to slow. There were four cars now behind the first, and all of them stayed in a line, creeping along the road.
“Get lower,” Joe said, and they scrambled down the slight hill to crouch in the ditch.
“I thought we wanted to catch a ride,” Cheyenne whispered.
“Yeah, but not with them! Don’t you think it’s odd that it’s barely dawn, we’ve not seen a car in an hour and then all of a sudden there are a handful all coming from the same direction?”
“People need to come into town to work shifts at the hotels,” she said. “They start early.”
“Do they all slow down and look for hitchhikers when they disappear?” Joe asked. “Those cars are from the mission.”
“How do you know?”
He didn’t answer her at first. Above them on the road, the cars filed by, and finally passed. Joe held his breath until the last taillight disappeared.
“I trust my gut,” he said. “It’s kept me alive so far.”
“I think you just wanted to get down in the dirt with me,” Cheyenne said.
Joe turned to look at her face. Her eyes looked up at him in a gaze that said she really wouldn’t mind if he came closer and her lips were pursed in a way that begged a kiss. For a second, he thought she was actually serious, and then she couldn’t hold it any longer, and broke into a laugh.
“Gotcha,” she said, when she saw his face.
“Careful,” Joe said. He slipped one arm across her back and then grabbed her shoulders with each hand, as if to hold her down. But Cheyenne’s body suddenly rolled towards him, throwing him off guard. She flipped around and he lost his grip on her arm.
Before he knew what happened, she had straddled his waist, grabbed both his wrists and pinned them to the dirt over his head. Joe found himself face to face with her breasts. Her knees dug hard into his sides, preventing him from moving.
Cheyenne was grinning as she stared down at him. Her hair fell across one cheek, but this time it was clear she wasn’t trying to be seductive.
“Don’t mess with me,” she warned. “I can take you down.”
“I thought you said you didn’t want to take me down,” he said.
“You know what I mean.”
Joe could feel the soft press of her inner thighs and the velvet soft skin of her sex brushing his belly. Her breasts were covered in specks of reddish dirt, and the pucker of her bellybutton below them was tantalizing. Despite what she’d just said, he felt his cock begin to stir.
“I know,” he admitted. “But this is… awkward.”
Cheyenne laughed and pushed off of him. Joe sat up and willed his libido to cease.
“Sorry. I used to wrestle a lot with my brother,” she said.
“I was just joking,” he said.
“So was I.” Her face was bright with humor, but Joe wondered if that was all. Despite the situation, he was really enjoying spending time with her. She was strong and funny. Down to earth. And really sexy. He realized he needed to abort this line of thought immediately. Damn, they needed to get some clothes on!
“Now that you’ve lost us our ride, shall we start walking again?” Cheyenne stood up and brushed the dirt off her belly and thighs.
“I guess we gotta,” Joe said, and stood up himself.
She glanced at his waist and stifled a smile. “Keep that gun in its holster, cowboy,” she said, and then scrambled up the hill.
Joe felt his face flush with heat.
After a moment, he took a deep breath and joined her.
CHAPTER 32
“HOW COULD YOU?” Alex cried. She sat on the floor near Helone’s couch. Tears cut hot paths down her cheeks. “I was so stupid; I thought you were different.”
The demon knelt beside her and reached out to hold her arm. Alex looked down and saw that Helone’s six fingers were now plump; gone was the withered, parchment-like look of her skin. She’d fed on Alex’s fear and anger. And apparently fed well.
“I am different,” Helone said quietly. “If I wasn’t, you’d be screaming in pain and oozing blood from all parts of your body. Look at yourself. Are you whole? Healthy?”
“What you did to me was horrible,” Alex said. “I think I’d rather be beaten.”
/> “That could be arranged,” Helone warned.
Alex yanked her arm away. She was still crying, but inside, her heart grew more and more angry. The demon had set her up, gained her trust and then milked her. And she’d fallen right into the trap.
“Those weren’t even my parents, were they?” she asked finally.
“They were what you think of your parents,” Helone said.
“So it was all fake. How did you do it?” Alex asked.
Helone shrugged. “I can do a lot of things you would not understand.” She gestured to the room. “These skins are empty. They can be filled with many things. And many things far more horrible than your dead parents.”
“So you can’t actually bring back the ghosts of my mom and dad,” Alex said.
Helone looked hard at Alex for a moment without answering. When she did, Alex felt her chest grow tight.
“I can, and maybe I will, if you give me problems.”
Oddly, that struck Alex as funny, and she couldn’t resist a sour smile. “So, if I don’t obey you, you’ll call my mom.”
Helone nodded. “Come on, get up. I’m sorry that I had to do that to you, but it’s over.”
Alex rose, and as she did, Helone smiled and held her arms out. “I know it was painful, but look at what you’ve done for an old woman. I could go to the prom!”
Helone pirouetted and Alex had to admit, the dinner of her emotions had done wonders. The shriveled dark skin of the old woman now shone with the gloss of a healthy young adult; her chest was firm, the breasts defied gravity again, and her belly no longer looked aged and paunchy. It was tight and firm. Helone’s black thighs were curved and muscular, and her eyes glowed with an orange fire that actually made Alex feel really nervous for the first time since she’d met Helone. Before, she’d appeared a decrepit old woman. A demon past her prime. A has-been. Now… she looked ready to eat anybody alive who got in her way. She looked truly dangerous.
“I’m glad I could help,” Alex said, though the bitterness of her voice said otherwise.
Helone laughed. “There will be many who will be jealous,” she said. “I think I’ll go outside tomorrow. There’s no point in wasting youth on the dark.”
“Does that mean I can go out too?” Alex asked.
Helone shook her head. “Imagine a giant banquet table of hot fudge sundaes and cakes and cookie plates all sitting in the middle of an empty park square in the middle of your New York City. How long do you think that square would remain empty?”
“Not long?” Alex said.
“No, not long,” Helone said. “If I took you out there, it would be the same thing. You’d draw Curburide like a table of sweets. And I don’t feel like fending them all off. I will go out myself while you remain here safe.”
“Youth wasted in the dark?” Alex said. Her sarcasm was pointed.
“Youth saved in the dark,” Helone corrected. She took Alex’s hand and pulled her out of the room. “Come, you’ve had a long night. It’s time to sleep.”
“I don’t feel very tired right now,” Alex said.
“That wasn’t a suggestion,” Helone answered. “It’s time to go to your room. We’ll talk more later.”
She led Alex back down the hall and then waited until Alex stepped inside. She turned and Helone stood there, blocking the way out.
“Dream well,” the demon said. And then she shut the door. Something metallic clicked.
Alex tried the handle and nodded when it didn’t move.
“From one cage to another,” she murmured.
Alex laid down, but she couldn’t sleep. She kept seeing her mom and dad, their faces brimming with sadness, disappointed and accusing.
She kept seeing exactly what she’d run away from.
And that only led her to think of Joe, and the few weeks she’d spent with him. She’d had to kill her parents to leave with her own life, and shortly thereafter, Joe had picked her up on the side of the road. He had had other things on his mind at the time and hadn’t questioned her too much about what she was running from. So she’d gotten into his car and let him drive her far from her home, still on the run really, no matter how far they went, moving from the Rocky Mountains to Phoenix to Austin and New Orleans.
He had shown her so much, in such a small amount of time. And all the while, they had been on the trail of a murderess. Because Malachai had let them know about Ariana’s plan to help the Curburide overrun the world. And it had all ended up with her dragging the murderess through the doorway to hell.
Here.
Maybe it was her appropriate just reward for what she’d done to her parents. But, she wasn’t dead yet.
So there was still hope.
Alex got back out of bed. She didn’t have to just lay here and wait. She put her hand on the door handle again and twisted. It didn’t budge. But she didn’t believe it was a lock she couldn’t break. She’d escaped from Elotan’s dungeon, after all. Sure, she’d had help with that, but…
Alex twisted the knob again, and it didn’t even creak. She wasn’t going to break this lock by force. At least not that kind.
She put her mind into it, instead. She willed the doorknob to turn.
Nothing happened.
Alex closed her eyes and reached out with her inner voice to call Gertrude and Matthew and all of her spirit friends. One by one she called their names, imagining their faces here, in the room with her. That used to make them appear before her almost instantly. But the “airwaves” remained silent. The room remained empty. Did they not hear her, or did they not care anymore? Either answer was painful.
She walked away from the doorknob and looked on the dresser for a hairpin or a paperclip; something she could use on the lock. But there was nothing. This was the room of a prisoner, after all.
Alex sat back down on the bed. Momentarily defeated. Helone had used her, drained her and left her in her cage while she went out on the town. The thought made her furious. She’d started, against her will, to trust the demon and look what it had gotten her.
The anger drove her back to the door. If she could move a lock with the help of her friends, why couldn’t she do it herself? Why couldn’t she tap into Malachai’s strength, who lay quiet, inside her. The demon hadn’t said a word to her in twenty-four hours, but she knew he was there, or else she wouldn’t be standing. He was her crutch.
Her power.
Alex smiled. She might not be able to do a thing alone, but she wasn’t alone, was she?
“You and I are one,” she whispered in her head. She assumed he heard. But she didn’t wait for his answer. Instead, she closed her eyes again as she grasped the doorknob and drew on invisible strength she knew was there. And somehow, from somewhere, it came. There was a fire in her arms, faint, but palpable, as if she was suddenly a lightning rod of static.
She felt jittery, ready to unload the energy she’d unlocked somehow. It couldn’t stay inside her or she’d burn up herself.
The power inside her grew stronger; she focused it on the doorknob. She’d done this sort of thing before; she knew how it felt to channel invisible fire. It was a hard feeling to describe, but it was amazing.
Sparks surged all through her body, but especially in her fingers and face. If she wanted to, she could probably have zapped a blue arc from her fingertip to the doorknob. She felt as she imagined a spotlight felt – a focal point of unstoppable light.
Alex closed her eyes and aimed that energy through her fingers to the doorknob. The power now had a place to go and eagerly surged through her arms and into her hands. “Let me out,” she whispered. And as she did, the energy left her.
Something inside the doorknob clicked. She put her hand around it and turned. The knob moved easily.
The door opened.
She was free.
Alex released a breath she hadn’t even kno
wn she’d held. She was out of her room, but there were more doorways to pass, and she didn’t know where Helone was right now. She hadn’t heard her since the demon had locked her in the bedroom. Alex hoped that Helone had gone out, flush with the health of a renewed body.
Or spirit.
Whatever her “form” was. Certainly it was refreshed and reinvigorated compared to the wrinkled, withered thing she had first found here. All thanks to Alex’s pain.
The hallway was silent and she tiptoed past the kitchen and then the room of skins. It was dark and quiet there; Helone did not appear to be lounging on the couch, as was her wont.
Alex held her breath, and passed the room. She moved as silently as she could down the hall and into the room she’d first entered when she’d slipped into Helone’s home. The place with a fireplace filled with a pier of skulls. The trophy room. There were bones everywhere, and now she realized that they were the bones of people like her. People who had been lured into Helone’s home under the false impression that it was somehow a refuge from the hell outside.
Alex no longer believed that.
She was going to take her chances with the demons outside.
The door was locked. She’d expected that, but it still was a disappointment when she twisted the knob and found that it wouldn’t budge. And there was no keyhole or deadbolt to work with either. How it was locked? She didn’t know. Helone’s magic, most likely. If she could overcome that once, she was sure she could again.
The foyer remained empty, as did the trophy room. Alex put both hands on the knob and once again, reached inside her, to draw on her secret well of power. The secret that had been silent ever since she’d come to Helone’s. She knew he was still there though; without Malachai, she wouldn’t be walking.
The familiar feeling surged, and she focused it on the doorknob, just as before.
And just as before, within a few seconds, the door lock clicked and Alex was free. She pushed the door open and stepped outside, pulling it shut slowly behind her. She took a deep breath, and for the first time really considered where she was going to go.
