“I’m gonna head down to the Seattle Center. Maybe Natalie’s down there. She used to love it there when we’d come down and visit as kids.” When he kept looking at her expectantly, she sighed. “You wanna come with me?”
Rudy smiled. “Sure.”
This is getting good, he thought.
They went out and walked toward the city bus stop. While waiting, Rudy had the strongest urge to hold Emily’s hand.
Emily could feel his eyes on her. It was not a bad feeling. She kept wondering how on earth it was possible that she now found herself attracted to the very thing that had given her so much misery, so much agony. Maybe this is progress, she thought. She let her hand dangle at her side. When Rudy took it gently into his own, she didn’t complain. His hand felt strong. She liked that.
Will pulled up to Loreli’s house and parked the BMW. He’d made a pit stop at a Shell station and cleaned himself up a bit, but he still had some minor scrapes and burns to attend to, which he did courtesy of some healing patches. He’d had the two-hour drive back from Coeur d’Alene to reconsider his decision to go ahead with Loreli’s “demon dialysis,” but he just kept coming to the same conclusion. His choice made sense in order for him to find and slay his adversary, and it made sense for his future with Natalie. But none of that mattered if Loreli wasn’t here.
He’d driven around Coeur d’Alene looking for her but come up empty. He hoped she’d be here, back at home, safe. He looked at the house. All was quiet, but one never knew. He could easily be walking into a trap; the place might be packed with shedemons. Well, so be it, he thought. If they’re in there waiting for me, then they’re going to learn the meaning of pain. He checked his Megashocker, which was charged up, and he loaded a small, short-range Flayer Pistol for backup.
He got out and eschewed the front door for the back, entering without knocking. He heard a soap opera on the TV and, holding the Flayer Pistol in front of him just like a movie cop, he moved down the hallway. Loreli’s mom Tanya was lying on the floor in front of the TV. He quickly knelt and checked for a pulse. She was alive and reeked of vodka. She hadn’t been attacked; she’d just passed out. Charming, thought Will. He looked around the room. Some books and knick-knacks had been hastily tossed into moving boxes.
He rose up and moved down the hallway leading to the basement. He heard noises coming from beneath him. Loreli, he hoped. But was she alone? Will opened the door slowly and had begun to descend the stairs when an orange light exploded in front of his face and his feet were yanked out from under him. He tumbled down the steps and landed hard on the concrete floor. Loreli stood over him wearing her duster and holding the trip cord she’d just used to bring him crashing down.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said. Her voice was cold. “I thought for sure you were dead.”
She turned and went back to work, packing up her menagerie of chemicals and herbs and beakers into boxes. Sebastian ran back and forth anxiously in his cage. Will got up, rubbing the back of his head. He’d hit it hard bouncing off a couple of stairs.
“Nice to see you, too, sis. I was afraid something happened to you back in Coeur d’Alene. I woke up in the field behind the house. What happened?”
“What happened is you blew a gasket and I had to get the heck out of there. I’m lucky to be alive.”
“I’m sorry.”
“At this point, I don’t particularly care.”
“Listen, Loreli . . .”
She stopped packing and glared at him. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m leaving. They got the head. You blew it.”
“I know,” Will said. “You don’t have to rub it in.”
“I’m not rubbing it in, just stating the facts. You blew our mission and now the Dark Lord’s back in business. I can’t do this alone now, and clearly I can’t count on you. The only way for me to have any chance at all to take him down is to get the hell out of here, start over, and try and take him by surprise some other time.”
“Loreli.” Will’s eyes were imploring and intense as he spoke. “He’s got my mother. I can’t fail again. I can do this, I can take care of him, but I need your help.”
“Are you not listening? I’m leaving,” said Loreli.
He didn’t blame her for being angry. “Do what you have to do. But before you go, do me a favor first.”
“You almost got me killed and now you want a favor? Okay, brother, I’ll bite. What favor do you want?”
“I want to deny his blood. Like you did. I want you to change me, with your machine.”
Will spotted a device draped in plastic in the corner. He moved quickly to it and removed the covering.
“Is this it?”
“Yes.”
Will was familiar with dialysis. He knew that it was done by using a special fluid called dialysate, a mixture of pure water and chemicals that was carefully controlled to pull waste out of one’s blood without removing the substances the body needed. A semi-permeable membrane (one with microscopic holes that allowed only certain types of particles to pass through) kept the blood apart from the dialysate. The membrane let the wastes and fluid in the blood flow through into the dialysate, but blood cells and larger molecules, like necessary proteins, could not fit through the holes.
Purging the evil—his father’s influence—from his plasma, the white and red blood cells that comprised blood, was a physical impossibility. But he was intelligent enough to understand that when it came to the physical laws of the universe, there were many things that defied scientific analysis, things that did happen that shouldn’t, things that were, quite simply, impossible. He was smart enough to know that sometimes hard science took a backseat to the unreal and implausible. Loreli was in possession of just such a thing.
Loreli turned slowly and looked at the machine, then back at Will.
“I don’t have time,” she said. And then she resumed packing.
Will grabbed her arm. “You don’t have time not to,” he said. “He’s going to come back stronger than ever.”
“Take. Your. Hand. Off. Me.” Her eyes flared.
Will slowly removed his hand from her arm and spoke calmly. “You were right. The Dark Lord’s blood pollutes me, twists me into knots so I can’t think straight and I put the people I care about in danger. I have to defeat him, and I’m beginning to think that the only way I can do that is to perform this chemical . . . exorcism of yours. Loreli, please.”
Loreli studied Will carefully, as though she were making up her mind. She went to a case, opened it, and extracted syringes, tubing, and plasma bags.
“There’s no backing out,” she said. “Once you’re in, you’re in.”
“Let’s not waste any more time,” he said.
“Lie down.”
She yanked a tarp off a padded folding table. Will took his shirt off and lay down. Loreli set up an I.V. and disinfected the insides of his arms with a pre-moistened alcohol towelette. He made fists and veins rose up in both his arms. She unwrapped a syringe and used it to get a glucose line going in his left arm. She was—not surprisingly—an expert with needles, and he barely felt the puncture. She turned the machine on and adjusted some levels on the front, pressing buttons. When she’d made all the adjustments she needed to, she unwrapped another syringe and pierced the vein in his right arm.
“You won’t regret this,” said Loreli. “It doesn’t take very long. Just close your eyes and relax and . . .”
Will did not hear the end of Loreli’s sentence. She had added propofol to his glucose line, and the drug pulled him quickly into a dreamy, semi-conscious state in which he could hear sounds but not make sense of them, and his brain was crowded by a thousand muddled images and sensations.
Loreli smiled at her half-brother lying before her helpless, vulnerable, and totally captive. She was proud of her accomplishment. Will Hunter was one of the most intelligent, resourceful, and cunning creatures on the planet, and she alone had be
en able to subjugate him. She had planted her seeds well, and they had grown.
Initially she had planned to lure him down to the Under City and mortally wound him right before her father’s eyes, a heroic act that would no doubt have placed her firmly in the Dark Lord’s good graces. But then she saw that her father, her Master, was headless, and therefore had no eyes with which to view her heroics. It was shocking, and painful, and it cut her to the bone. What had happened? Why hadn’t the legions of demons, demonteens, and shedemons been able to find his head? The new plan came to her quickly, for she knew that Will Hunter could do what the armies of darkness could not. He would find it. He would find her father’s head. And he did! He led her right to it. But the head was not enough. When she’d seen her father’s headless body surrounded by so many urns full of blood, she’d deduced that more that just his head would be needed to restore him to full strength, and that she had an even greater duty to fulfill. That’s why, when the house in Coeur d’Alene had burst into flames, she had dragged him out to safety. And after, in the Under City, her suspicions had been proven correct. The Prince of Darkness would need the blood of his first-born son to rise again.
There was, of course, no such thing as “demon dialysis.” One could not remove the evil from one’s blood. But she’d worked Will expertly; she’d totally played him. He’d wanted to believe so desperately. He was motivated to change his behavior, to cool down his hot streak. And she’d done such a masterful job of appearing calm in the face of all storms that he’d actually been inspired. He wanted to be like her. But no one was like her. She was unique; she was special. She was more than gifted. Surely now he would see that, too.
Loreli watched the blood as it was gradually pumped out of Will’s body. She smiled again, knowing how easy it would be to simply suck him dry like a vampire, to keep the machine pumping until he died from loss of blood. But that was not what she had planned for her darling brother. No, she had a far more painful scenario in store. She would leave him alive—barely. He would wake up and have a nice playtime with Sebastian. And then he’d return home to Natalie.
Loreli had never experienced love. This fact haunted her, gripped her insides like a vise. And to assuage that pain, she had orchestrated a situation in which the most potent love she’d ever witnessed—the love between her brother and the pathetically ordinary Natalie—would twist in upon itself in a manner so ugly not even Romeo and Juliet’s tragic end could compare.
Society was full of songs and books and movies and TV that proclaimed the power of love. And Loreli had spent her entire life looking for it. But it was not the call of romantic love that she heard; it was another kind of love that cried out to her.
As a very young girl she’d asked her mother about her father: who he was, the kind of man he was, and—most important of all—did he love her, did he really truly love her? At first her mother had said, Yes, darling, of course your daddy loves you, he said so with his last breath when he flipped his pickup truck and lay dying out on the highway. Years later, that twisted myth gave way to others, depending on how intoxicated her mother was. He died in the war. He ran off with a whore. He had leukemia. He’s coming home any day now.
Eventually, Loreli locked her mother in the basement and sobered her up enough to drag the clawing, unvarnished truth to the surface. It was then that she learned who her biological father was and how he had shunned and abandoned her, even tried to kill her and her mother with a flood. As the months and years passed, her feelings had shifted from disbelief to revulsion, and then—even though she knew it was wrong, even though the creature had treated her badly, had tossed her aside like she was garbage—new thoughts began to stir within her young mind. Why did he leave me? What’s wrong with me? Why won’t he love me? Her initial hatred gave way to a fierce need for his approval: I want my daddy to love me.
For years she searched for him, finding and learning from demons, killing many in the process. She was rapacious, focused, intent; she needed to find him as much as she needed to breathe. When, in her sixteenth year, she heard his voice call her name three times, she succumbed with glee and became infected, crossing over to the dark side. She was, after all, the daughter of the Prince of Darkness. She’d reveled in her newfound status and rushed to him, thinking he would of course grant her audience. But, upon hearing of her intent to meet with him, he sent a lowly emissary to inform her that she was to keep her distance. She was outraged. Her heart stung. She would not be denied! She threw herself headlong into danger by defying his authority and disobeying his orders, battling her way into the bowels of Mount St. Emory, where she confronted him directly. She had seen the dual thrones and, claiming her birthright, demanded that she, not this Johnny-come-lately Will Hunter, be anointed to rule by her father’s side.
The Dark Prince sat and listened quietly to his unwanted daughter’s arguments. And then he stood. Her heart leapt as she imagined the next few moments. Her father would finally see her for the unique and precious person that she had become, and he would embrace her. It would be all that she’d ever dreamed of.
But the Dark Lord was nothing if not a dyed-in-the-wool male chauvinist. No woman—and certainly not this mistake, this bastard offspring—would ever rule by his side! The back of his hand came cold and swift, striking her face, hurling her backward, bruising her cheek and crushing her hope. She wept as he spit a curse and summarily banished her from his kingdom. Loreli was dragged from the cavern and shunted by demons from pack to pack, beaten, humiliated, and robbed of her dream.
When Mount St. Emory had erupted, she was lying unconscious in a Seattle hospital bed. Days later, after she’d captured a demonteen and learned the news—that the Dark Lord’s plan for his son to rule by his side had failed—a fresh conspiracy took hold in her heart and mind. She would not be so easily dismissed! She would show her father his folly. Surely he would see now that it was she, Loreli, and not Will who was meant to rule at his side. She would emerge triumphant by defeating the object of her father’s misplaced affection. With her alchemy, she would render Will Hunter useless, humiliate and destroy him, and bring unto him a slow and painful death.
And her father would be proud.
Chapter Twenty: The Dark Side of Love
Natalie still stood on the ledge outside her bedroom window, feeling the cold leach up through her feet into her whole body. She’d watched as Emily and Rudy departed, leaving her alone in the big, silent house. Now the only thing she could hear was the wind, and the ringing in her ears. Like he’s calling you on the telephone, she remembered Will saying, way back in Harrisburg, explaining how the Dark Lord’s infection began. She thought she heard someone calling her name. It was a distant echo, warped and warbled. Was it real? Or just paranoia? No, there it was again: a voice. She shuddered, her body viscerally reacting to a memory. She had heard that voice before . . . at a rave in Harrisburg. Back then she’d blocked it out, combating the evil thoughts creeping into her brain with good thoughts, thoughts of her and Will together, in love. But now . . . could she summon the defense she needed?
She stumbled back to her bedroom window and climbed inside. Her head ached and she tried to think good thoughts. But the medallion around her neck emitted a powerful, intoxicating scent, a scent that swept her into a topsy-turvy world where she climbed high into the breezy void of her mind—and then came crashing down into darkness, down where mad monsters waited to ambush her, engulf her, punish her.
The battle for her soul had begun.
Loreli watched Will’s skin color shift from a healthy blush to a sickly pallor as the machine continued to deplete his blood. She had siphoned off two pints . . . now three. Will’s heart rate and breathing were both steady, but in his drugged dream state, he was clearly suffering. She could tell from his facial expressions. No doubt his subconscious was sensing that his life was being drained away and was fighting to survive.
Over the past few days, Loreli had come to love this unique sibling of hers. He was handsome
, intelligent, strong, and compassionate. She admired his fighting skills and his dedication to his cause. He was a warrior through and through, fierce and lethal and capable of devastating brutality. She imagined that if things were different, she would want to have such a ferocious fighter at her side. It was almost a pity that he wouldn’t be alive much longer. But she also hated him for having so effortlessly earned their father’s love and then thrown it away. She was just as strong as he was, just as smart—smarter! Yet he was the one their father wanted, not her.
Still, a small part of her wished she didn’t have to do this. But it must be done, she thought. It was her only chance for redemption. Her only chance to earn his respect and love. Down in the vault she had seen the urns of blood the shedemons had collected and realized that what her father needed was not just his head, but blood. At first she thought her own blood would suffice. What better sacrifice could a daughter make, than of her own blood? But her mother had contracted hepatitis B—a hazard of her former occupation—and passed the curse on to Loreli, which meant her blood would not be acceptable. Only Will Hunter’s blood could heal their father.
She touched her brother’s face, gently tracing the lines of his nose, his chiseled cheekbones, his strong chin. What a waste, she thought. He would have made a fine demon leader, an efficient subordinate to her. But that could never be. To pave the path for her ascension, it was necessary to remove all obstacles. And the biggest obstacle of all lay right before her, his body weakening as the seconds ticked by.
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