Rapture fa-4

by J. R. Ward

  Caldie, home of the twin bridges, was leading the nation in disappearances. Over the previous year, the city of some two million had had three times the number of reported cases in Manhattan’s five boroughs, and Chicago—combined. And the total for the last decade topped the entire Eastern seaboard’s figures. Stranger still, the sheer numbers weren’t the only issue: People weren’t just disappearing temporarily. These folks never came back and were never found. No bodies, no traces, and no relocation to other jurisdictions.

  Like they had been sucked into another world.

  After all her research, she had the sense that the horrific mass slaughter at a farmhouse the month before had something to do with the glut in get-gones…

  All those young men lined up in rows, torn apart.

  Preliminary data suggested that many of those identified had been reported missing at one point or another in their lives. A lot of them were juvie cases or had drug records. But none of that mattered to their families—nor should it.

  You didn’t have to be a saint in order to be a victim.

  The gruesome scene out in Caldwell’s rural edges had made the national news, with every station sending their best men into town, from Brian Williams to Anderson Cooper. The papers had done the same. And yet even with all the attention, and the pressure from politicians, and the exclamations from rightfully distraught communities, the real story had yet to emerge: The CPD was trying to tie the deaths to someone, anyone, but they’d come up with nothing—even though they were working on the case day and night.

  There had to be an answer. There was always an answer.

  And she was determined to find out the whys—for the victims’ sakes, and their families’.

  It was also time to distinguish herself. She’d come here at the age of twenty-seven, transferring out of Manhattan because it was expensive to live in NYC, and she hadn’t been getting anywhere fast enough at the New York Post. The plan had been to transplant for about six months, get some savings under her belt by living with her mother, and focus on the big boys: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, maybe even a network reporting job at CNN.

  Not how things had worked out.

  Refocusing on her screen, she traced the columns she knew by heart, searching for the pattern she wasn’t seeing…ready to find the key that unlocked the door not just to the story, but her own life.

  Time was passing her by, and God knew she wasn’t immortal….

  When Mels left the newsroom around nine thirty, those lines of data reappeared every time she blinked, like a video game she’d played for too long.

  Her car, Josephine, was a twelve-year-old silver Honda Civic with nearly two hundred thousand miles on it—and Fi-Fi was used to waiting at night in the cold for her. Getting in, she started the sewing machine engine and took off, leaving a dead-end job. To go to her mother’s house. At the age of thirty.

  What a player. And she thought she was magically going to wake up tomorrow morning and be all Diane Sawyer without the hair spray?

  Taking Trade Street out of downtown, she left the office buildings behind, went past the clubs, and then hit the lock-your-doors stretch of abandoned walk-ups. On the far side of all those boarded-up windows, things got better when she entered the outskirts of residential world, home of the raised ranch and streets named after trees—

  “Shiiiiiiit!”

  Ripping the wheel to the right, she tried to avoid the man who lurched into the road, but it was too late. She nailed him square on, bouncing him up off the pavement with her front bumper so that he rolled over the hood and plowed right into the windshield, the safety glass shattering in a brilliant burst of light.

  Turned out that was just the first of three impacts.

  Airborne meant only one thing, and she had a terrifying impression of him hitting the pavement hard. And then she had her own problems. Trajectory carried her off course, her car popping the curb, the brakes slowing her momentum, but not fast enough—and then not at all as her sedan was briefly airborne itself.

  The oak tree spotlit in her headlights caused her brain to do a split-second calculation: She was going to hit the goddamn thing, and it was going to hurt.

  The collision was part crunch, part thud, a dull sound that she didn’t pay a lot of attention to—she was too busy catching the air bag solidly in the face, her lack of a seat belt coming back to bite her on the ass. Or the puss, as the case was.

  Snapping forward and ricocheting back, powder from the SRS got into her eyes, nose, and lungs, stinging and making her choke. Then everything went quiet.

  In the aftermath, all she could do was stay where she’d ended up, much like poor, old Fi-Fi. Curled over the deflating air bag, she coughed weakly—

  Someone was whistling….

  No, it was the engine, releasing steam from something that should have been sealed.

  She turned her head carefully and looked out the driver’s-side window. The man was down in the middle of the street, lying so still, too still.

  “Oh…God—”

  The car radio flared to life, scratchy at first, then gaining electrical traction from whatever short had occurred. A song…what was it?

  From out of nowhere, light flared in the center of the road, illuminating the pile of rags that she knew to be a human being. Blinking, she wondered if this was the moment where she learned the answers about the afterlife.

  Not exactly the scoop she’d been looking for, but she’d take it—

  It wasn’t some kind of holy arrival. Just headlights—

  The sedan screeched to a halt and two people jumped out from the front, the man going to the victim, the woman jogging over to her. Mels’s Good Samaritan had to fight to wrench open the door, but after a couple of pulls, fresh air replaced the sharp, plasticky smell of the air bags.

  “Are you okay?”

  The woman was in her forties and looked rich, her hair done up in a thing on her head, her gold earrings flashing, her sleek, coordinated clothes not matching an accident scene in the slightest.

  She held up an iPhone. “I’ve called nine-one-one—no, no, don’t move. You could have a neck injury.”

  Mels yielded to the subtle pressure on her shoulder, staying draped over the steering wheel. “Is he okay? I didn’t see him at all—came from out of nowhere.”

  At least, that was what she’d meant to say. What her ears heard were mumbles that made no sense.

  Screw a neck injury; she was worried about her brain.

  “My husband’s a doctor,” the woman said. “He knows what to do with the man. You just worry about yourself—”

  “Didn’t see him. Didn’t see him.” Oh, good, that came out more clearly. “Coming home from work. Didn’t…”

  “Of course you didn’t.” The woman knelt down. Yeah, she looked like a doctor’s wife—had the expensive smell of one, too. “You just stay still. The paramedics are coming—”

  “Is he even alive?” Tears rushed to Mels’s eyes, replacing one sting with another. “Oh, my God, did I kill him?”

  As she began to shake, she realized what song was playing. “Blinded by the Light…”

  “Why is my radio still working?” she mumbled through tears.

  “I’m sorry?” the woman said. “What radio?”

  “Can’t you hear it?”

  The reassuring pat that followed was somehow alarming. “You just breathe easy, and stay with me.”

  “My radio is playing….”

  Chapter Three

  “Is it hot in here? I mean, do you think it’s hot in here?”

  As the demon crossed and recrossed her mile-long, Gisele Bündchen legs, she pulled at the low neckline of her dress.

  “No, Devina, I don’t.” The therapist across the way was just like the cozy couch she was sitting on, heavily padded and comfortable-looking. Even her face was a chintz throw pillow, the features all stuffed in tight and slipcovered with concern and compassion. “But I can crack a window if it would make you
feel more comfortable?”

  Devina shook her head and shoved her hand back into her Prada bag. In addition to her wallet, some spearmint gum, a bottle of smartwater, and a bar of Green & Black’s Organic dark, there was a shitload of YSL Rouge pur Couture lipstick. At least…there should have been.

  As she dug around, she tried to make casual, like maybe she was double-checking that she hadn’t lost her keys.

  In reality, she was counting to make sure there were still thirteen tubes of that lipstick: Starting from the left in the bottom of the bag, she moved each one to the right. Thirteen was the correct number. One, two, three—

  “Devina?”

  —four, five, six—

  “Devina.”

  As she lost count, she closed her eyes and fought the temptation to strangle the interrupter—

  Her therapist cleared her throat. Coughed. Made a choking noise.

  Devina popped her lids and found the woman with her hands around her own neck, looking like she’d swallowed a Happy Meal in a bad way. The pain and the confusion were good to see, a little hit off the pipe that had Devina curling her toes for more.

  But the fun couldn’t go any further. If this therapist bit it, what was she going to do? They were making progress, and finding another one she clicked with could take time she didn’t have.

  With a curse, the demon called back her mental dogs, relinquishing the invisible hold she hadn’t been aware she’d thrown out.

  The therapist took a deep, relieved breath and looked around. “I…ah, I think I will open that window.”

  As the woman did the honors, she was unaware that her shrink skills had just saved her life. The two of them had been meeting five times a week for the past couple of months, talking for fifty minutes at the cost of one hundred seventy-five dollars each time. Thanks to the sessions of emoting and crap, Devina’s OCD symptoms were getting slightly easier to bear—and considering how things were going in the war with that angel Jim Heron, counseling was so going to be needed for this next round.

  She couldn’t believe she was losing.

  In the final contest for supremacy over the earth, that angel had won twice, and she just once. There were only four more souls to battle over. If she lost two more? There was going to be nothing left of her or all her collections: Everything would disappear, those precious objects that she had gathered over the millennia, each an invaluable memento of her work, gone, gone, gone. And that wasn’t the worst part. Her children, those glorious, tortured souls trapped in her wall, would be subsumed by the good, the beatific, the untainted.

  The mere thought of it was enough to make her sick.

  And on top of that bad news? She’d just been penalized by the Maker.

  The therapist resettled on her cushions, back from the fresh-air hunt. “So, Devina, tell me what’s on your mind.”

  “I…ah…” As anxiety rose, she lifted up her bag, inspected the bottom for holes, found none. “It’s been hard….”

  None of the lipsticks could have fallen out, she told herself. And she’d checked the number before she had left her lair. Thirteen, a perfect thirteen. So logically, they were all there. Had to be.

  But…oh, God, maybe she had put the bag down sideways, and one had escaped because she forgot to zip it closed—

  “Devina,” the therapist said, “you seem really upset. Can you please tell me what’s going on?”

  Talk, she told herself. It was the only way out of this. Even though counting and ordering and checking and rechecking felt like the solution, she’d spent aeons on this earth getting nowhere doing that. And this new way was working. Kind of.

  “That new coworker I told you about.” She wrapped her arms around her bag, holding everything in it close to the body she assumed when she walked among the monkeys. “He’s a liar. A total liar. He double-crossed me—and I was the one who got accused of foul play.”

  Ever since she had started therapy, she had couched the war with that fallen angel Heron in terms a human of the early twenty-first century could understand: She and her nemesis were coworkers at a consulting firm, vying for the Vice Presidency. Each soul they battled over was a client. The Maker was their CEO, and they had only a limited number of attempts to impress Him. Whatever, whatever, whatever. The metaphor wasn’t perfect, but it was better than her doing a full reveal and having the woman either lose her own mind or think Devina was not just compulsive but certifiable.

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “The CEO sent both of us out to talk to a prospective client. In the end, the man gave us his business and wanted to work with me. Everything was fine. I’m happy, the client was…” Well, not happy, no. Matthias had not been happy at all, which was just another reason she’d been satisfied with the victory: The more suffering, the merrier. “The client was being taken care of, and it was all settled, the contract for service signed, the matter closed. And then I get dragged into a bullshit meeting and told that we both have to reapproach the man.”

  “You and your coworker, you mean.”

  “Yes.” She threw up her hands. “I mean, come on. It’s done. The business is secured—it’s over. And now we’re stuck with a redo? What the hell is that about? And then the CEO says to me, ‘Well, you’ll still retain your commission for the contract.’ Like that makes it all okay?”

  “Better than your losing it.”

  Devina shook her head. The woman just didn’t understand. Once something was hers, letting it go, or having it taken away from her, was like a part of her true body being removed: Matthias had been ripped out of her wall and placed once again upon the earth.

  Frankly, the power of the Maker was about the only thing that frightened her.

  Aside from the compulsions.

  Unable to stand the anxiety, she cranked open her bag again and started counting—

  “Devina, you work well with the client, right.”

  She paused. “Yes.”

  “And you have a relationship with him or her.”

  “Him. I do.”

  “So you’re in a stronger position than your coworker, right?” The therapist made a gesture with her hands, a physical representation of “no problem.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.” She’d been too pissed off.

  “You should. Although I will say, there is something I’m a little confused about. Why did the CEO feel the need to intercede? Especially if the client is not only under contract with the company, but satisfied?”

  “He didn’t approve of some of the…methods…used to secure the business.”

  “Yours?”

  As Devina hesitated, the woman’s eyes made a quick dip downward in the décolleté direction.

  “Mine, yes,” the demon said. “But come on, I got the client, and no one can fault my work ethic—I’m on the job all the time. Literally. I have no life except for my work.”

  “Do you approve of the tactics you used?”

  “Absolutely. I got the client—that’s all that matters.”

  The silence that followed suggested the therapist didn’t agree with the whole ends-justify-the-means thing. But whatever, that was her problem—and probably the reason why she was shaped like a sofa and spent her days listening to people bitch about their lives.

  Instead of ruling the underworld and looking hot as fuck in Louboutins—

  As the anxiety spiked again, Devina started a re-count, shifting the lipsticks one after another from left to right. One, two, three—

  “Devina, what are you doing.”

  For a split second she nearly attacked for real. But logic and a reality check kicked in: The compulsions were on the verge of taking her over. And you couldn’t be effective against an enemy like Jim Heron if you were trapped in a closed circuit of numbering or touching objects that you knew perfectly well hadn’t been lost, moved, or fingered by someone else.

  “Lipstick. I’m just making sure I have my lipstick.”

  “Okay, well, I want you to stop.”


  Devina looked up with true despair. “I…can’t.”

  “Yes, you can. Remember, it’s not about the things. It’s about managing your fear in a way that is more effective and permanent than giving into the compulsions. You know that the split second of relief you get at the end of a ritual never, ever lasts—and it doesn’t get to the root problem. The fact of the matter is, the more you comply with the compulsions, the stronger a hold they have on you. The only way to get better is to learn to bear the anxiety and reframe those impulses as something you have power over—not the other way around.” The therapist leaned in, all earnest cruel-to-be-kind. “I want you to throw one of them out.”

  “What.”

  “Throw one of the lipsticks out.” The therapist eased to the side and picked up a wastepaper basket the color of Caucasian skin. “Right now.”

  “No! God, are you crazy?” Panic threatened on the periphery of her body, her palms breaking out in a sweat, her ears beginning to ring, her feet going numb. Soon enough, the tide would close in, her stomach doing flip-flops, her breath getting short, her heart flickering in her chest. She’d been through it for an eternity. “I can’t possibly—”

  “You can, and what’s more, you have to. Pick your least-favorite shade out of them, and put it in the bin.”

  “There is no least-favorite color—they’re all the same red. 1 Le Rouge.”

  “Then any of them will do.”

  “I can’t….” Tears threatened. “I can’t—”

  “Little steps, Devina. This is the linchpin of cognitive behavioral therapy. We have to stretch you past your comfort zone, expose you to the fear, and then get you through it so you learn that you can come out on the other side in one piece. Do that enough times and you begin to loosen OCD’s grip on your thoughts and decision-making. For example, what do you think is going to happen if you throw one of them out?”

  “I’m going to have a panic attack. Especially when I get home and it’s not with me.”

  “And then what.”

  “I’ll buy another to replace it, but it won’t be the one that I threw away so it’s not going to help. I’ll just get more compulsive—”