“I’m not following you,” Daniel said.
Bonita snorted. “You wouldn’t want to follow me there.”
“Let’s start at the beginning.” He shuffled through his papers, then picked one up and scanned its text. “According to records, you left Deadtown on Thursday at nine fourteen P.M. as part of a group of workers. The group was covered by a Class B permit held by the We Klean 4U maintenance company. You were the only worker who didn’t return.” He set down the piece of paper and tapped it with his index finger. “Where did you go after you exited the checkpoint?”
“To work. I clean offices in a building on Boylston Street.” She gave the address, and Daniel wrote it down.
“Was anyone with you there?”
“Just my friend Suzanne, but we work on different floors. The third floor was empty, except for me. Until he showed up.”
“Who?”
“The Devil.”
Daniel looked up sharply. I did the same. Bonita was dead serious.
“The Devil,” she insisted. “I know it was. Even though at first I thought it was just some guy.” Neither Daniel nor I said a word. Bonita’s hand shook as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’d almost finished vacuuming the hallway when I looked up to see a man walking toward me, fast. I didn’t know what to do. We’re supposed to keep a low profile because some of the tenants don’t like having zombies clean their offices. It’s usually not a problem, since we clean after hours. Anyway, all of a sudden there was this guy, and he looked mad.”
“Can you describe him?” Daniel asked.
“Tall. Dark eyes with thick black lashes. Black hair, too, but pale skin. Unhealthy pale, like a vampire. But why would a vampire come after a zombie? He wore a black suit, and all that black made me think of an undertaker.” Her gaze went distant, and she shuddered. “He looked like Death coming to get me.”
It was my turn to shudder. She’d just described Pryce. Poor Bonita. I knew how it felt to have that scowling face approach, lips twisted in a sneer, intent on doing harm. Of course she’d think of death and devils.
“I started to apologize,” Bonita continued. “Why, I don’t know. I was only doing my job. But he looked so angry, like he wanted to hurt me. I stood there frozen, and he grabbed both my arms. I must have blacked out or something, because after that everything went dark.” She hugged herself and rocked in her seat. “But I couldn’t have passed out, because I remember how scared I was. His grip hurt my arms. I smelled the most awful smells—worse than the time a skunk died under my grandparents’ back porch. And the sounds. Mean, horrible laughter. Screams. Sobbing. That’s when I knew it. I’d died and gone to hell.”
“That’s one name for it.” I turned to Daniel. “Somehow, Pryce pulled her into the demon plane.”
He nodded, still watching Bonita. “What happened next?”
“The place I was in changed. It was still dark, but quiet all of a sudden. And instead of dead skunk it smelled musty, like a cellar. The Devil let go of my arms, pushing me away. I fell on a hard floor. It was cold, concrete. I scooted backward, trying to get away from him, but I hit a wall. I waited, like this”—she threw both arms across her face—“expecting red-hot pincers or a flaming pitchfork or whatever they use to welcome the damned to hell. But nothing happened. After a few minutes, I realized he was gone. I was alone.”
Pryce had pulled Bonita through the demon plane to deposit her elsewhere. I remembered what Butterfly had said about Pryce’s visits to a place in the Ordinary. “You said the place smelled musty. Can you remember anything else about it?”
“Pitch-black, like a cave. I never saw it, but I explored every inch. Concrete floor, like I said. Cinder-block walls. When I stood up, I couldn’t reach the ceiling, even on my tiptoes. There was hardly any floor space, though. I couldn’t lie down. When I slept, it was sitting up, my legs stretched out so my toes were up against the far wall and my back wedged into a corner.”
“Did you try the door?” Daniel asked.
“I didn’t even think there was a door at first. I screamed and screamed until my voice was gone because I was sure I was sealed into that place. But later, I don’t know how much, the door opened. It slid sideways into the wall, and somebody stood there. You can bet I found my voice for more screaming then. I thought the Devil had come back for me. But it wasn’t him. It was . . . I don’t know what it was. Even in Deadtown, I never seen nothing like it.”
“Please try to describe it, Bonita,” Daniel said. “We can bring in a sketch artist later if that would help.”
Bonita closed her eyes. Whether she was trying to remember or to blot the memory out, I couldn’t tell. “There was some light in the hall, but it was dim and the . . . the thing stood in front of it. And it wore a robe, with the hood pulled up and forward. I tried to back away from it, but the cell was so small. It stepped inside and set down a tray of food and water on the floor—I don’t mind telling you, I was hungry by then. I’m a zombie after all.” She ventured a small smile, which turned almost immediately into a frown. “But I almost lost my appetite at what happened next. As the thing straightened, it pushed back its hood and peered at me. Its face was like a skull covered with old, dried-out skin. And it had fangs. Like a vampire’s, but bigger. That made me start screaming all over again. The thing smiled, and it looked like those fangs grew a mile. Then it turned and left. There was another one in the hall—I saw it. The door slid back into place and I was alone again.”
Daniel and I exchanged a look. Her jailers were Old Ones, members of a race of super-vampires trying to turn their undeath into true immortality. The Old Ones were ruthless; the zombie plague had been their test run, released on thousands of innocent people, of a magically enhanced virus that could “cure” death. Their leader, Colwyn, a fifteen-hundred-year-old former druid, had recently escaped from police custody. If Pryce and the Old Ones were working together, it was the worst kind of bad news.
“Time passed. I ate food when they brought it—two of ’em always came together. I slept. I tried not to think about what would happen to me. And then the Devil came back. All of a sudden, he was just there. He grabbed my arms again, and we entered that other darkness. The noisy, smelly one. But this time, there was light. It flickered, like it was from fires all around, but I never seen no flames.”
“What happened then?”
“The Devil picked me up and threw me on a table. I thought for sure it was flaming-pitchfork time. He never let go of my arms, but he moved around behind my head and held me down from there. I struggled, but it didn’t help. The Devil said, ‘Hurry.’ It took me a second to realize he wasn’t talking to me. There was another man—he looked like the Devil, except he was older and had a beard. This one was a ghost. I could see that weird light flickering right through him.” She swallowed. “And there was . . . there was . . .”
We waited. It was hard, watching Bonita struggle to get past the horror of the memory, but she needed to express it her own way. The bearded guy was obviously the shade of Myrddin, free to detach himself from Pryce in the demon plane. I had a pretty good idea who—or what—Bonita was about to describe, but I didn’t want to put words into her mouth.
“It was horrible. Horrible. Huge, like a giant. But so . . . disgusting. It had blue skin all covered with warts, some of them big like tumors. I had to crane my neck back to see its face—and then I wished I hadn’t. The firelight was coming from its eyes. And then it grinned at me. More fire was inside its mouth. It lit up rows of sharp, pointy teeth big as steak knives.”
Difethwr, as I’d expected.
“The giant was a demon, Bonita,” I said.
“I knew it! I knew I was in hell. The whole time, from the very first minute I saw the Devil, I prayed and prayed. It’s how I kept from going crazy in that tiny cell. I promised, if I got out, I’d never do anything bad ever again.” She crossed her heart as she said it, as she’d probably done hundreds of times in her cell. But then a look of defeat dimmed
her eyes, and again she buried her face in her hands. “And then what happened? I did get out, only to do the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life. I tried to kill that lady.” She dropped her hands and leaned forward. “I don’t even know why I did that. I don’t know her. I never saw her before tonight. But these voices filled my head. Screaming. It hurt so bad. They kept shrieking, ‘Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill the lady!’ Like a million of them. They didn’t give me a choice.”
Bonita confirmed my suspicions that Pryce was causing zombies to be possessed by the Morfran. But now we were coming to the part I really wanted to know—how.
“When did you hear those voices for the first time?” I asked.
“After the bearded ghost cut me.”
“What happened?”
“Like I said, the Devil held me down on that table. He musta put all his weight on my arms.” She rubbed her upper arms like she wanted to erase the feel of it. “Then the other one cut me. Here.” She pulled down the neck of her T-shirt and pointed to her breastbone, marked by a vertical gash about six inches long. “The . . . the demon breathed on it. Fire. God, it hurt. I felt like my whole body was a red-hot coal. The ghost waved his hands over me and he said the same words, over and over again.”
“What words?” I grabbed a spare pencil and a piece of paper from Daniel’s stack. Even if Bonita didn’t remember Myrddin’s chant exactly, Mab might be able to make sense of it. And if we knew his spell, we could figure out a way to undo it.
“I don’t know,” Bonita said. “I didn’t understand the words, but I heard them so many times it’s like they’re written in my brain. They sounded like . . .” She frowned, concentrating. I gripped the pencil.
Bonita screamed. She pushed back her chair and waved her arms crazily.
Three paces from Bonita, where a second before had been nothing but empty space, stood Pryce. He lunged toward the zombie. In a flash, Daniel drew his gun and fired. Black blood spurted from Pryce’s chest, but before his knees even started to buckle, he disappeared. He was back in a wink, his wound healed—not even a spot of blood on his white shirt.
The guard by the door nailed Pryce with a rapid-fire blast of zombie droppers, and the same thing happened. Pryce disappeared before the bullets exploded. But this time, when Pryce reappeared, the Destroyer was with him.
Bonita fell to the floor and scrambled under the table. “No! No! No!” she screamed. I shouted in pain as my demon mark blazed to life. Difethwr leered at me, fire leaping behind its eyes. I couldn’t look away. The guard shot again. The Destroyer absorbed the bullets. If anything, they made its inner fire burn hotter. I felt the burning in my own arm.
The Hellion released my gaze and turned toward the guard. Flames blasted from its eyes, pinning the screaming man to the wall.
Daniel was on his feet, shouting. He fired again, but the Destroyer moved in front of Pryce, shielding him. Its eye flames burned white-hot.
The guard moaned and then went silent. The Destroyer pulled back the flames, releasing him. As the guard slumped to the floor, the Hellion turned toward Daniel.
“Look out!” I yelled.
Daniel ducked under the table. Flames scorched the wall behind where he’d stood a moment before.
“Enough, Difethwr.” Pryce’s voice cut through Bonita’s screams.
The Hellion knocked the table aside.
“I said, ‘Enough’!”
Difethwr, furious, whipped its head around. Flames streamed from its eyes. They raced toward Pryce, halting an inch away from his face. The two of them stood there, deadlocked. Then, inch by inch, the Destroyer reeled back the flames until they were a mere glow in its eye sockets. It growled and turned away.
Pryce straightened the sleeves of his suit jacket. “Hello, cousin,” he said, as though we’d bumped into each other on the street. “Ready to join our side yet?”
“Never.”
Pryce looked surprised. “Haven’t you been doing your homework? Surely the book wouldn’t hide from you the delicious irony of what’s to come.”
My demon mark smoldered as I tried to block out the vision of me attacking a defenseless woman on Boston Common.
“She knows,” the Destroyer said. “We can feel it in her.”
Bonita was curled up in a corner. Pryce bent over and closed his hands around her arms. “Thanks for keeping this one safe for me. This evening’s events have been most interesting, and I believe we have much to learn from them. See you in hell, cousin.”
The Destroyer’s rumbling laugh filled the room. Then the Hellion, Pryce, and Bonita—her eyes screwed shut, her voice wailing in despair—all disappeared.
16
“LET ME GUESS,” DANIEL SAID, AS HE STOOD AND BRUSHED off his clothes. “They went to the demon plane.”
“I’m afraid so.” Poor Bonita, dragged back to hell so Myrddin and Pryce could figure out why and how the Morfran left her body. I didn’t hold out much hope she’d escape a second time.
“Can we go after them?”
I shook my head. “I can perceive the demon plane, but it’s like I’m looking at it through a window. I can’t step into it bodily.” Once, I’d been pulled physically into the demon plane by a Hellion, as Pryce had done to Bonita. I almost hadn’t made it back.
“Damn it!” Daniel kicked the table. Then he bent over the fallen guard, feeling for a pulse. He wouldn’t find one.
As he straightened, his expression grim, someone began working the lock mechanism in the door. The bolts shot back, and it opened to reveal a doorway full of gun barrels.
“Put down your weapons,” Daniel said. “You’re too damn late. What the hell took you so long?”
“Sorry, sir. We had two men monitoring the video. One of ’em tried to contact me over the radio, but then it went to static. I sent Mike in, and Mike came running back yelling the guys in the video room were dead. Both of ’em. And their monitor showed this room empty and the table knocked over. We opened the door soon as we knew.”
“Didn’t you hear—?”
“Daniel,” I interrupted, “it wouldn’t have done any good. There would have been more deaths.”
Daniel glanced at where Pryce had stood and taken several bullets. Spots of black blood marked the wall. Yet Pryce had disappeared into the demon plane and returned good—or bad—as new, in less than a second. “There’s no way to kill him?”
“It would take something like a grenade, blow him to bits before he could pop back to the demon plane and repair the damage. Or else make him vulnerable by severing him from his shadow demon—he can’t enter the demon plane without that connection.” That’s how I’d once defeated Pryce, all too temporarily. Now, however, Pryce was bound to the Destroyer. He could draw on the Hellion’s demonic energy to give himself power and extend his life.
Out in the hallway, a slim man with close-cropped hair exited the stairwell door. He wore a dark suit and hurried over to us. “I got here as soon as I could,” he said to Daniel. “Here’s the phone you requisitioned.”
“Vicky, this is my new partner, Ramón Sandoval,” Daniel said, taking the phone. “Ramón, Vicky Vaughn is our demon expert.”
“Nice to meet you,” he said as we shook hands. His dark brown eyes showed friendliness, not a trace of the hostility that was the calling card of Daniel’s previous partner.
“You, too,” I said. I turned to Daniel. “Not that I was looking forward to seeing his smiling face or anything, but what happened to Detective Foster?”
Ramón laughed, and I liked him for it. Even Daniel let a smile quirk one side of his mouth upward. “He quit. Took an executive position with Humans First.” Humans First was a political action committee pushing an anti-paranormal agenda.
“As a law enforcement liaison,” Ramón added. “They’re welcome to him, as far as I’m concerned.”
“He claimed he’d been considering the move for a while, but I think that being half strangled by a PDH was too much for him.”
“Yeah. Hard to mainta
in his tougher-than-the-monsters image when word of that got around.” I wanted to join their laughter, but the reference to getting strangled by a zombie made me need to check on Mab. That, and a deep-down, little-girl desire to reassure myself of her love.
“I have to find my aunt,” I said, moving toward the stairwell. I hoped she’d shifted. Not only to heal, but to avoid Pryce and the Destroyer. Pryce had sent those zombies to kill Mab—both of them had gone straight for her. “Kill the lady!” Bonita had said the crows commanded. And according to Butterfly, Pryce needed to get rid of “some lady” to move forward with his plans.
I wasn’t the Lady of the Cerddorion. Mab was.
“Wait, first let me give you this.” Daniel held out the cell phone Ramón had brought. “Tonight when I got word of an attack at the airport, I couldn’t get in touch with you. I didn’t know you were in the middle of it. I need to be able to reach you at any hour. So keep this with you and don’t turn it off.”
“You know why I don’t have one of those, right?” Cell phones can’t withstand the energy blast that accompanies a shift. After I’d destroyed three in a single month, I was finished.
“Don’t worry about that. If you blow it up, or even just lose it, let me know immediately and I’ll get you another. We need to stay in close touch.”
He programmed the number into his own phone, then made sure my new phone had his numbers in it. I felt kind of dumb as he showed me the basics of making and answering calls and listening to voice mail—my six-year-old nephew could do all that plus play games—but it wasn’t my fault the technology changed so fast.
I took the phone and stuck it in my back pocket, then went to find Mab.
MAB WAITED FOR ME WHERE I’D LEFT HER, AND KANE SAT beside her. My heart leapt to see him, then sank as the thought hit me how badly I’d let both of them down. I stood in front of them, not knowing what to say. Mab had a feather stuck in her hair. Pigeon, by the look of it. Good choice for shifting in a city. As I plucked it away, I inspected her throat. The bruises were gone. Mab closed her hand around mine and squeezed.
Hellhound (A Deadtown Novel) Page 14
