Every Breath You Take

by Chris Marie Green

  Little by little, the thing that had grabbed him materialized. . . . First, its dark legs that were bigger than any tree trunks in the area. Second, a massive, bulging torso. Last, a head with hair that spiked away from its skull as it faced away from us, its jaws working as it definitely chomped down on Dennis.

  Amanda Lee began backing away. Dean just laughed in that cocky Loki way of his.

  “That was easy,” he murmured. “Demons don’t like sass from their inferiors. I guess Dennis sassed one time too many.”

  “But,” I said, “Amanda Lee didn’t banish Dennis to any portal.”

  The demon just stood there with its back to us, chewing, gulping. Then it burped and shook its head. It burped again, long and grotesque.

  Something was approaching from behind us, sounding like a jet screaming through the atmosphere, and we ducked and looked up to find a swarm of dark mist heading for the demon.

  What?

  As it passed, I thought I felt something familiar in its cloud. Was it . . . Twyla’s mist?

  Amanda Lee yelled at me over the commotion. “The mist’s returning to Dennis before the demon completely devours him! Go back to being a ghost, Jensen!”

  But Dean had already darted away from me, and—poof!—my body hushed into its ghost form. A fraction of a second afterward, something exploded out of me like magnetized needles flying toward the demon.

  My mist! I almost wept with joy to say good-bye as the demon’s mouth yawned to take Twyla’s and my refuse back in to join Dennis.

  All I could hear was Amanda Lee’s chopping heartbeat and breathing, plus my electric fizzing, as the demon chewed some more. Then it shook its head again, harder this time. A gurgle hit the air.

  An upset stomach?

  Oh shit.

  Dean had returned, and he had a hold of my suddenly solid arm. “You’re done here. Let me get this.”

  “But Amanda Lee wasn’t the one who put Dennis away!” I repeated.

  She was standing her ground, too, even when the demon turned around slowly, ever so slowly, revealing its face.

  My first instinct was to projectile-pea-soup barf, Exorcist-style. He was that hideous: his face was a lacquered black that showed stiffened, clownish features under the moonlight. Wide-set eyes, a bulbous nose, a mouth that looked like someone had slashed it at the sides, expanding it all the way across his cheeks in a wide, ghoulish smile.

  Dean tightened his grip on me as the demon nodded at him.

  “Loki,” it said in a drawn-out, deep-wedged voice that should’ve been right at home in an abyss.

  “Dean . . . ?” I started to ask.

  “This is the thing that tied me to the rock and used the serpent on me,” he said levelly, like he’d always known his past would come back to dog him. “It must’ve sought Dennis out because of his connection to you, then to me.”

  The demon raised a clenched hand and leered at Dean. Then, just like that, its arm extended all the way over to my god, hovering over him. It slammed its hand down.

  Shock enveloped me as I watched my Dean crushed under the demon’s invisible fist.

  When it lifted its hand, there was nothing left. No god. No Loki.

  No Dean?

  I withered back to being a ghost, just like everything had been pulled out of me—heart, lungs, air. I was all dying, sputtering electricity.

  But we were supposed to be protected by the Wiccans’ spell. . . .

  Or maybe the Wiccans’ powers were just like gnats to a demon.

  I stared at where Dean had been standing, heaviness rushing me like an infusion of anesthesia. Dead inside. I felt deader than ever.

  No. He’d be back any second, grinning, touching my arm and making my blood pound. I’d just wait for him.

  He’ll be back . . .

  I glanced at the demon, barely registering that it was now checking me and Amanda Lee out with its dark-clown leer.

  No Dean . . . ?

  The demon opened its mouth, but all that came out were a bunch of glowing slivers, like shimmering vomit.

  As I watched in unfeeling stillness, the glimmering sections took off in different directions, except for two of them, which zoomed toward the cabin. I was just functional enough to hope that they were the essences of Louis and Randy that Dennis Smith had stolen from them . . .

  When the demon was done throwing up, he comically rubbed his tummy, a clown all the way. Then he spoke in that demented low voice again. “I barf the Dennis scraps out, out, out!” It pointed at me. “Want my own scraps now!”

  It reached over the protective line with that extended arm and jammed its hand into my core, yanking out a part of me.

  It happened so fast that all I could do was choke on words, inhaling them in bolts of stunned energy.

  Amanda Lee hauled in a sawing gasp as the demon stuffed that part of my essence into its mouth, gulping it down. Immediately, it giggled in a high tone, its body shrinking and going pale and luminous.

  Becoming the misty ghost me.

  But the Jensen I saw through my blurred, checked-out vision was darker, and she had a smile like knife gashes on her face, too, blood dripping from the cuts.

  My dull brain kicked with a memory. A movie I’d seen sometime . . . didn’t know when. They called it a Glasgow smile. . . .

  “Haaate Dennis!” The demon Jensen said in my voice, except it was like my words were being played backward on an evil turntable.

  I was wheezing all over, each blip of drained electricity like a gouge in me. Depression put me under its heel, heavy and soaked with the thought that nothing would ever be right again.

  No Dean. No Loki. No me anymore.

  No Amanda Lee, either, because she wasn’t around. She was probably dead, too, even though I hadn’t seen it happen.

  The demon danced around as bad me, using my voice again. “Dennis don’t need a demon! But now Dennis gone . . .”

  It giggled so loudly that the tree branches around bad Jensen snapped off, pops echoing throughout the night.

  And as bad Jensen laughed, all I could do was sink to the ground, feeling like mud. Would I see Dean if I called my wrangler right now and went into the glare? I should do that . . . call my reaper . . . give up . . . What use was there anyway?

  Just as I started to summon a reaper, a blast of air blew out of the ground a hundred feet in back of the demon—

  Dean. And he thrust out of the ground like a fist pushing him right back into this dimension.

  But he wasn’t really Dean. He was Loki now. Even from this distance, I could see him, the son of two giants, a tall, muscle-bound god with fire in his eyes and his long hair blowing back. He was far enough away for me to still be a ghost, still pooled on the dirt.

  In a blink, he shifted into a huge wolf on all fours, red-eyed, snarling at the giggling demon.

  Dark Jensen stopped laughing and made a circus gesture to him. Ta-da!

  “Loki back!” bad me said with glee, just before it started running like a spaz toward Dean.

  The gigantic wolf snarled, his back hunched, his fur standing on end. Then he sprang at the demon, making it cry out with my own warped voice. But its cry turned to crazed laughter as the wolf swiped at it.

  The demon was fast, and in my dark image, it swooped here and there, avoiding each flashing bite from Loki.

  “Nee-ner, nee-ner!” it said, wiggling its Jensen fingers. “Can’t get me!”

  The wolf jumped and whipped out his tail, swatting the demon until it stumbled away in my smaller Jensen body. In the next second, the animal jumped onto the demon, pinning it to the ground, and. . . .

  Holy shit. When the wolf shoved his snout into the demon’s mouth, I retched. But when he came out with a glowing slice of my essence, sending the demon back into its original form, my depression slid away.

 
He whipped his snout to toss my essence all the way back at me, and as it arced through the air, I opened myself wide to it, feeling it seep back into me, giving me electric strength again. And heaven knew I had a lot of it after being with Dean.

  Across the ground, his wolf gaze met mine, and I beamed at him. My champion.

  But behind him, the demon rose in its huge, dark-clown body.

  I pointed to it. “Dean!”

  But too late—it was quicker than ever, flashing itself into another shape.

  A serpent.

  I started flying toward Dean just as the demon wrapped around his wolf body, thrashing him to the ground, poising itself above him and . . .

  Was that venom coming out of its fangs?

  Loki’s story ripped into me: bound up, poison dropped into his eyes, blinded . . .

  As the first drop hit the wolf’s face, he howled, his tone bending into a very humanlike cry of pain, and I used every last spark of energy to speed up, to get to Dean before I had to hear him tortured anymore . . . .

  24

  The closer I flew to Dean and his strained sounds of anguish, the more my form went solid. Soon I was falling out of the air and running toward him, my lungs bursting, adrenaline punching me.

  “No!” I screamed, coming to a skid in front of the massive serpent demon, who was wrapped around my god, dripping venom into his eyes from its fangs. He was in Loki form, but he was still Dean to me. “No more!”

  The serpent glanced at me with that dead black gaze. “Hah,” it said, then went back to its playtime.

  What could I do to stop this thing while I was in this body? I couldn’t change my arms into blades, just like a ghost would, because I wasn’t a ghost right now. And I didn’t have rock salt with me—not that it would slay a demon anyway, just burn it.

  When Saint Michael’s prayer scrambled through my head, I grabbed at the pieces of it, but it wouldn’t come together.

  What were the words?

  Out of complete desperation, I did the only thing I could think of.

  “You want him more than me?” I yelled. “You only had a piece of my soul until the wolf took it away. Don’t you want all of me?”

  With a hiss, the serpent peered up, its slim tube body swaying. It still had that gashed demon-clown mouth, its tongue flicking.

  I didn’t move. “It looks like the only thing you can do to a god is torment him. But you’ve tasted my soul. The rest is right here. Do you want it?”

  Loki bellowed. “Stop, Jen—”

  The serpent sprayed venom at him, and a tight cry came from Loki. The demon focused on me again as I shook in my shoes.

  “Offering your sssservice to me?” it asked.

  Now that I had its interest, I began reversing my steps, back toward the protective-spell area. Even if the demon could conjure wind to blow me out of the safety zone again or reach across its boundary, I hadn’t seen it actually cross over to stand on the cleaned ground. I had to take the chance that we could still be protected, had to get Dean/Loki back there.

  I didn’t know what would slay a demon, but I sure knew one thing from watching horror movies: they were susceptible to flattery. So I gave that a try, praying this would work.

  “I see now what power you hold,” I said, walking backward. “If you can beat a god, what kind of defense do I have against you? I know when I’m in a losing battle.”

  It began to follow me, slithering, dragging Loki with it. “Attach to you? Will you let me?”

  Don’t commit. Just keep talking.

  I started backtracking faster. “What happens when you attach to someone?”

  “Ha. The questions. They come now.”

  It was speeding up its progress, greedy for my permission to join with it, and I could see Loki pushing at the serpent’s coils, doing no good.

  “Attachment,” it hissed. “It is loyalty. Being a better servant than Dennis Smith, who was a bad servant.”

  I had to be close to the protective area. Two hundred feet? A hundred?

  Behind me, I heard the rustle of wind against branches, the stirring of a rough breeze coming. Was the demon working up another wind to blow me away from my only haven?

  I had to get Loki away from that thing, bring him over that line somehow. . . .

  I kept talking. “Dennis didn’t respect you, but I do. I see you could have swallowed me up already, just like you did with him, and I’m grateful you’re giving me a chance to redeem myself.”

  “Dennis useless. Dennis with no respect. You respect.”

  “I do.” Definitely.

  It was coming faster. Faster. “Fear is respect. I feel fear from you.”

  The tree rustling was louder.

  Then a zooming sound took over the night, almost like the one that’d flooded the air when Twyla’s mist had zipped overhead earlier. But this was ten times louder.

  If it was coming to get me, I was going to give it a run for its money.

  I turned, taking off and hauling ass the rest of the way toward the protective-spell line, still close enough to Loki to have a body. I panted. I pumped my arms. Ahead, I could see a cloud of gray moving through the trees.

  Was it . . . No. It couldn’t be.

  Ghosts?

  My friends?

  As I forced myself to sprint even faster, I felt something behind me, and I had the feeling that it was the serpent’s mouth opening, striking at me. On a burst of adrenaline, I dove forward like I was going for a base, my arms stretched as I skidded over the ground, eating dirt.

  Then I rolled over just as my friends flew over me and toward the serpent. There were blades out: Scott with his sword arms, Louis and Randy at full power with long pronged spears, Old Seth with spike-ended whips, Twyla whooing with a couple of chainsaws, and Marg with her X blazing and her arms like maces, along with Grandpa and Grandma McGlinn, Yul, Feng, and Lee, and all the ghosts from the happy house.

  They mobbed the demon serpent as it reared up at them, raising Loki in its tightened tail. But at the force of the ghost attack, the thing dropped him as it shifted into something else: a beast that could handle all the blades coming at it.

  A multilimbed cyclops that flared back at my ghosts with fiery arms.

  Loki was blindly crawling away, fast, and I scrambled to him, grabbing him, helping him away from the chaos until we were at least a hundred feet into the safety zone.

  He was still the ginormous god with the long hair, a stranger dressed in a breastplate, a long shirt thing, and boots, his eyes swollen shut from the venom. But even blinded, he had to sense that I wasn’t used to him like this, and he shifted to Dean.

  Blond, long-limbed, hunky boyfriend. I pulled him to me in an ecstatic embrace, then fell to the ground, resting his head in my lap. I untied my long-sleeve shirt, took it off, then wiped his eyes as the sounds of ghost battle kept on.

  I had to get him back to fighting shape.

  He gripped my wrist. “I’m okay, Jenny. This’ll just take a minute for me to deal with.”

  “We don’t have a minute.”

  The demon cyclops was beating the ghosts off himself, and I got the bad feeling that it was coming for me next, since I’d baited it.

  My soul. That’s what it was fighting to get to.

  “What were you doing?” Dean asked, his face turned to me. “You can’t make promises to a demon like that!”

  “I couldn’t think of another way. Besides, I didn’t make promises. I just . . . tempted it.”

  I wiped his eyes again, and it struck me that this was exactly what Loki’s wife had done for him thousands of years ago. The shattered look on his face told me he realized it, too.

  A moment passed, and it was like all the turmoil around us disappeared. Him, me . . . that’s all there was for one beautiful beat of time.

  Then s
omeone shrieked, and when I glanced up, I cringed at the sight of the demon slicing through Feng, one of the Chinese ghosts. In two halves, he floated down to the ground, burning to ash from the demon touch, but with no electricity around, he couldn’t heal.

  His wrangler came out of nowhere, circling down from the sky, and Feng accepted its outstretched gloved hand. The reaper took him under its veil, consuming him before whisking off.

  After all this time as a ghost—more than two hundred years—he’d given up just like that?

  Fuck. Oh fuck, he’d been touched by a demon, and it was because of me. . . .

  I reached into my brain for an answer to all this, trying to remember Saint Michael’s prayer. And even though only the first few words were coming, I stood.

  “Where’re you going?” Dean asked.

  “To finish this.”

  “Jenny . . .”

  But I left him and went to the line, yelling up at the demon.

  “Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle! Be our protection against . . .”

  What came next? Think, Jensen, think!

  The words were swirling around in my memory somewhere, but in this body, adrenaline had completely taken over, and all it was doing was telling me to run.

  I wouldn’t. And when the demon roared, taking a thundering step back from the ghosts, I realized that it’d heard my prayer.

  I tried again, louder.

  “Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle! Be our protection against . . .” Come on . . .

  I blew out a breath, calmed down, and . . . “Against the wickedness and snares of the devil.” Now it was like a rush of words released from somewhere down deep. “May God rebuke him, we humbly pray—”

  The demon roared again, swatting those fire limbs at the ghosts, who seemed to take strength from what I was shouting. The beast reared back, shaking its head like it was trying to get the words out of its ears.

  And maybe his attempt was successful, because the demon stepped forward, angrier than ever. Roaring.

  I kept on. “And do thou, O prince of the Heavenly Host, by the divine power of God, cast into hell . . .”