Demons in My Driveway

by R. L. Naquin

  “They weren’t in the mood to help us, though. One more.” She marched ahead of me across the yard and didn’t hesitate before stepping into the third portal.

  Movement from the portal Sara had vacated a moment earlier snagged my attention. The portal folded in on itself and disappeared. On the other side of the yard, another portal did the same.

  Panicked, I ran toward the one Sara had gone into. Before I crossed those few feet, the portal folded up and winked out.

  Horror stricken, I stood with my hands up in protest, unable to squeak an objection. Sara was gone. I didn’t know what world she’d gone to. I didn’t know if she was in danger.

  I didn’t know how to get her back.

  One by one, all the portals closed, leaving me stranded in our world and Sara imprisoned in another.

  And I had no idea which one of us was in the worst danger.

  * * *

  I didn’t receive a text back from Talia, and it finally occurred to me that I’d never received one from her since she gave me the phone. Not once. This led me to wonder if maybe she didn’t have a phone of her own, but instead used fancy demon mojo to collect the message from me, then came to talk about it in person. This time, however, she didn’t respond right away.

  In fact, once the seven portals winked out, no others took their places. One at a time, my friends reported in, having found no sign of anyone who could have opened the portals in the first place.

  Riley and Maurice came back, exhausted from beating bushes and running an ever-widening circle around the property. Having found nothing but a greasy McDonald’s bag stuck to a neighbor’s fence and a crusty sweat sock half buried at the end of my driveway, they’d given up.

  Maurice didn’t stick around for long. I explained what happened to Sara, and he blew up. “You let her go inside one of those things?”

  I flinched. Guilt was already eating me alive. “I didn’t let her, exactly.”

  Maurice scowled. “Both of you are crazy.” He ran a hand over the top of his head, causing the sparse hairs there to wave in the breeze as he paced. After several trips to the porch and back, he stopped and threw his arms in the air. “I can’t even look for her! What am I supposed to do?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer, stomping up the steps and into the house. I expected a soufflé or some other complicated dish to come out with him later. Unfortunately, I probably wouldn’t get any. I was in the doghouse.

  I totally deserved it. I could have done something to stop her. I didn’t know what, but something.

  Riley stood by, a sympathetic look on his face. “She’ll turn up. You’ll see. Sara’s tough.” I brushed the hair out of my eyes. “And so is Kam. We’ll find out who’s behind this.”

  I tried to clear my head of my guilt and fear. The sooner we figured this out, the sooner we’d all be safe. I hoped. “What about Marcus?” It seemed a stretch that Marcus was also a priest and had flown in to replace Lionel.

  A stretch. But not impossible.

  “I checked.” Riley dropped onto a porch step, pulling me with him, and slipped his arm around my waist, as if we’d never broken up. “He was in his tent, sleeping. I poked at him and he got mad. If it was him, I don’t see how he could have done it, anyway. Not from inside the circle.”

  I leaned in closer, absorbing the warmth of his body and breathing in the familiar, comforting smell of him. “Still, I’d feel better if we could keep an eye on him without his knowing it.”

  Gris leaped from the windowsill. “I can do it. If he’s sleeping, I can slip in there and hide. I’m small enough to stay out of sight.”

  “I don’t know, Gris.” I wasn’t crazy about the idea. Even if Marcus wasn’t the bastard behind everything that was going on, he was still a garden-variety bastard. If he caught Gris spying on him, what might he do to him? I shook my head. “We’re already down two people. I can’t lose you, too.”

  The miniature golem crossed his ankles and leaned against the silver napkin holder Maurice had recently acquired. “Listen, I know it’s dangerous. Everyone’s in danger right now, whether they act or not. I might as well be of some use. If the end comes, I don’t want to have my nose buried in stereo instructions. Let me contribute.”

  I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead. “I suppose. Just...just be careful, okay?”

  He grinned. “I’m always careful.” He hopped off the table to a chair, then to the floor. “Besides. You know me. I can talk my way out of it if I get caught.”

  He blew me a kiss, then disappeared into the house through a doggy door Maurice had installed for our smaller guests.

  I groaned. “I hate this.”

  Riley smoothed the curls down my back. “He’ll be okay. I don’t trust Marcus. Somebody has to keep close tabs on him.”

  The more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed that Marcus could be involved. If he were trying to bring about the end of the world, he wouldn’t be planning to take over the U.S. Board of Hidden Affairs. What would be the point?

  That didn’t mean I trusted him. He was still an asshole.

  I glanced at the driveway, empty of portals, and my heart squeezed. “We have to get Sara back.” I covered my face with my hands and mumbled through my fingers. “Anything could be happening to her.”

  Riley pressed his lips against my hair. “It’s going to be okay, Zoey. We’re going to fix this. We always do.”

  I truly wanted to believe that. I cleared my throat and pulled myself together. “We need to go outside and watch for portals.”

  Hand-in-hand, we went out front to sit on the front steps to wait. I texted Talia three more times while we sat there watching the sun go down.

  Andrew and Daniel arrived in Andrew’s beaten-up station wagon shortly after dark, and Kam followed them up the driveway on foot. I sighed in resignation. Mom was supposed to tell them not to come. I should have expected they’d come anyway.

  They stepped out of the car, and Milo sprang through the open door to vault into my arms. Foxy kisses and excited panting followed, while I cuddled him close and tried to calm him. Howard hopped out behind him, the soul of dignity. He settled in to ignore us and nibble grass.

  Kam threw her arms around the shoulders of both men, her flapper costume glittering in the moonlight. “Hello, boys. What’s the haps?”

  I smiled. A little of the old Kam was back. I probably shouldn’t have been so surprised by her resilience. After being a slave to an evil jackass for a century with no hope of release, being enslaved for a day or so while knowing friends were looking for her would be a great deal less stressful. And maybe there was a way she hadn’t mentioned yet to replace the missing gem.

  Or maybe she was really good at faking it.

  “So.” Andrew slid his arm around Kam. “Where is this Legion of Portals we came out to see?”

  I rubbed my cheek against Milo’s soft head. “Sorry. You missed them. And one took Sara with it.”

  “What?” Daniel stopped in midstride. Since the three of them were connected with Kam in the middle, the other two were forced to stop too. “Why would she go into a portal? What was she thinking?”

  The anxiety on his face was so sharp, I wanted to jump up and hug him. Daniel hadn’t been part of our group for long—maybe six months or so—but he was every bit as much a part of the family as Kam or Riley. Or Andrew, for that matter. I knew I felt that way about him, but I hadn’t thought about how close he felt to the rest of us. He was as stricken over Sara’s absence as he’d been determined to find Kam.

  Andrew had chosen well.

  I opened my mouth to explain what had happened and my jaw snapped shut. A portal popped open behind them and hung in the air twenty feet away.

  Riley jumped from the steps and waved them over. “Heads up!”

  The trio hurried over to us and turned to face the new portal. The surface shimmered and shifted, then folded up and disappeared.

  Darius dropped from the sky, his mothman face blank and his voi
ce echoing. “Why didn’t it stay?”

  Mom and Maurice stepped out on the porch.

  Mom wiped her hands on a dishtowel. “Did you see that?”

  As we stood there squinting, another portal opened a few yards from the last one, then winked out.

  I cast my gaze around the area, but didn’t see anyone who might be opening them. It was too dark to spot anyone anyway. “Kam, did you find any cultists out there earlier? You were gone a long time.”

  She tilted her head. “I kept hearing something, but I never found anybody. Whoever I was following was alone. And fast.”

  I glanced around the yard. “I have a feeling the time for aswangs is over. I think we’re seeing a concerted effort to crack the zombie code now.”

  I tugged my magical demon phone from my pocket and checked it for a response from Talia. Nothing.

  Knowing it was fruitless, I texted her again.

  Getting really worried. Please say you found Sara. Or that you’re on your way. Anything.

  Of course, there was no response.

  Around eight, Marcus wandered out, looking for dinner.

  To my frustration, a portal opened while he was standing there, putting to rest my pet theory that Marcus was responsible. Somehow this made me dislike him more, not less. At least if he were doing it, we’d have the mystery solved.

  Gris hadn’t reported in, but I figured Marcus could probably use a minder, even if he wasn’t the Big Evil Bad Guy doing all this.

  “We’re a little busy for a sit down meal,” I said. “If you ask nicely, maybe Maurice will make you a sandwich. That’s what we all ate.”

  He made a ridiculous harrumphing sound from the back of his throat. “I won’t have you sitting out here waiting for the end of the world to swallow you. I insist that you come inside where it’s safer.”

  I crooked an eyebrow and glared at him. “You insist?”

  “I’m still in charge, you know. A fact you’ve failed to recognize up to this point. When this is over, things are going to be very different.” He folded his arms over his puffed chest and gave me the weakest, lamest stink-eye I’d ever seen.

  I blinked, then turned my back on him. “Darius, can you escort Marcus to his tent, please? He seems to be overtired to the point of hallucinating. He needs a rest.” I walked away, blocking out his protests as Darius marched him through the house to the backyard. I had enough to worry about without some government shmo attempting a powerplay.

  Once he was gone, we settled in to watch the portal show unfold in the yard.

  All through the night, portals came and went. No one and nothing came out before each disappeared. With Sara missing, this was as much a disappointment as it was a relief.

  Maurice brought blankets and hot chocolate, and we took turns dozing on my porch and spread across the lawn. When dawn lightened the area, it revealed a crowd had joined in our vigil.

  Bruce the pigmy dragon. Tashi the yeti. Molly the brownie and her husband, Walter. A satyr, a centaur, and three selkies. Clusters of people of all shapes and sizes waited with us, silent. Alert.

  Maurice was closest to the edge, tense and studious, waiting for the right portal to appear so it would spit out Sara and give her back to us. Behind him, huddled to my right, Stacy sat watch, head held high and shoulders back. She may have accepted that Maurice would never be hers again, but she hadn’t deserted him, either.

  Tension collected in the grass and connected us all together in a fisherman’s net pattern. I felt it in my soul, all those connections. The connection I wanted to feel—Sara’s—eluded me.

  As the morning light seeped through the clouds, portals stopped appearing. I didn’t know if that meant the people or person opening them had run out of djinn magic or had simply had to rest.

  I didn’t dare hope it was over.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  When the first portal of the morning opened, everyone who had been waiting seemed to hold their breath. The other portals had opened, hung for a moment, then closed.

  This one failed to go away.

  A long, lanky leg ending in a black leather pump stepped out of the portal, followed by a woman in a charcoal skirt and jacket. Her dark hair was pulled into a neat bun, and wire-rimmed glasses perched on her upturned nose. She gave a curious look around and straightened her jacket.

  A gust of wind blew over her and her expression changed. In fact, everything changed. It was as if the wind had been radioactive, though it didn’t appear to give her pain. Everything on her shredded—clothing, face, hair, demeanor. She hunched, the weight of the world and her own ripeness wearing her down. She lifted her head to the wind and sniffed hard, then shambled toward us.

  Before our eyes, a smartly dressed businesswoman had transformed into a zombie.

  She opened her mouth and groaned, and saliva mixed with juicy bits of flesh dripped down her chin. She smacked into the barrier formed by the fairy ring and stood there, dazed. The wind kicked up and she sniffed the air. She moaned louder and tried to move forward until she hit the barrier again.

  Fairies flitted above her, then dove down to grab a hank of hair or a bit of fabric. They pulled, but the zombie didn’t drift into the air like she was supposed to. Wherever the fairies pulled—hair, clothing, skin—came loose in their tiny hands.

  The zombie bumped into the barrier again and settled into a mindless thumping over and over. I wasn’t sure the fairy ring would hold long under constant attack, no matter how mindless and unfocused.

  Behind the zombie woman, a well-dressed gentleman in a navy blue suit stepped out. He actually waved at me and smiled. I had time to think about what a nice guy he probably was before he changed, the same way the woman did.

  Several more squeezed out, changed into grisly, macabre caricatures of their previous selves, and joined the first woman in mindlessly bumping against the barrier.

  Without realizing it, I’d risen from my perch on the front steps and walked into the grass for a closer look. Riley startled me out of my mesmerized fascination by grabbing my arms and pulling me backward toward the house.

  “Zoey, you have to get inside. No arguments. No being tough. You have to get out of the way. Every last person here came to keep you and your mom safe.” As he spoke, he half dragged me inside. I’m sure if I’d protested, he’d have picked me up and carried me.

  This was it. Holy hell, the zombies were here. The end of the world was now in session.

  I hated having to accept the role of damsel in distress while others put themselves in danger. But this wasn’t about me. This was about the potential downfall of humanity and possible eviction of all magical creatures from our world. Two Aegises left. It was time I tried to behave more like the target I was and get my ass to safety.

  I ducked into the house and ran to the window. Mom moved over to give me room, and we huddled there, holding hands and watching the end of the world unfold in my front yard.

  The zombies piled against the fairy ring. Although it was invisible, I could almost see it bend against all that weight. From that single portal, the people poured out and turned as soon as our air touched their skin.

  On our side of the barrier, my friends formed a wall, and each held some sort of weapon. Maurice clutched a sharp kitchen knife. He must have brought out several, because a lot of people gripped similar knives. Riley had armed himself with a rake, and Stacy held aloft a pair of long, wicked pruning sheers. Shovels and axes, brooms and sharpened sticks—everyone had something.

  And there I was inside, relatively safe. I shook my head. “This isn’t right. And it doesn’t make any damn sense.”

  Mom was distracted as another wave of businessmen poured out of the portal. “What doesn’t make sense?”

  “All of it. Somebody’s trying to break the Covenant and bring about the end of the world, which means the zombie portal opens letting zombies destroy humankind. But they also said the Covenant is broken when all the Aegises are dead.”

  Mom gave me a
questioning look. “How can we be here and the zombies be here at the same time, you mean?”

  “Yeah. That. Cart before the horse.”

  “So, they’re opening the zombie portal early in order to kill us and break the Covenant?” She frowned and looked out the window, her voice tight. “Everyone’s sacrificing themselves to save us.”

  I followed her gaze to the thin line of our friends ready to do battle for our sake with only household items to keep them from being eaten or zombiefied themselves. “What’s the point of killing us with zombies if killing us releases the zombies? If we hadn’t had the weird visions, I’d say the Covenant itself is a crock.”

  She squeezed my hand. “The Board has no idea what the Covenant is.”

  “Exactly. They’ve been blowing smoke up our asses through all of this. The pieces don’t go together, because we’re missing a piece.” I turned away from the window, thinking. Bernice was useless lately, and poor Art was still new to the Board. But I knew someone who might have knowledge he was holding back and he was within my reach. “Marcus has to know something he’s not telling us.”

  I marched through the house to the back door, and Mom didn’t follow. She kept her vigil at the window as the zombies piled up with every passing second.

  The wind blew sour and nasty outside Marcus’s tent, and I was glad. I hoped he’d gag on the smell of centaur-ogre-troll-pixie-sea monster shit.

  I thrust the tent flap out of my way and stepped inside.

  Marcus wasn’t there.

  Gris was, though. A tiny piece of tape covered his mouth, and his body was wrapped in twine that had been tied to the tent support overhead.

  I sucked air through my teeth and dropped to my knees. “Oh, Gris, I’m so sorry.”

  The tape came off easily. “It’s okay,” he said. “No harm done. Just untie me, please. I’m getting a bit nauseated spinning around like this.”

  I felt foolish sitting in a tent, hands shaking, picking at knots while the zombie apocalypse raged on the other side of my house.

  As I struggled to untie him, Gris was patient. “You don’t have to be so delicate. I won’t break.”