A mass orgy was unfolding before my eyes, but there was nothing erotic about this frenzied fornicating. It was beyond lust or desire, fueled by a palpable darkness, a feeling of heaviness and despair that was growing stronger with each passing second. My gut churned with revulsion.
Rockmore, the only one who didn’t strip and join in, walked around the grunting followers and one by one, slashed their bare skin with the magical knife. The cultists barely reacted to the assault, too focused on reaching their climax, sweat and blood mixing together. The observatory’s stone floor ran red with the life force of Rockmore’s followers while their grunts and gasps of pleasure impregnated the air. The power of eros and thanatos, life and death, fueled the twisted ritual.
And as the floor turned crimson, so did the dome above. Scarlet light pulsed from the curved ceiling.
The ritual had begun.
As the couplings of the writhing, bleeding bodies reached their climax, Rockmore brushed past his panting followers and walked up to the telescope. It loomed over the scene like some pagan effigy, a New Age rendering of a deity outside of time and space.
Rockmore pressed his blood-speckled face against the telescope’s eyepiece, all the while whispering words in an ancient, guttural tongue I failed to identify.
The anticipation in the observatory was palpable. Awe mixed with fear as the geometric wards on the telescope exploded to life. A low electric hum reverberated through the confined space, building in volume and intensity with each passing second. There was a sizzling noise, and the smell of hot pennies and rotten meat assaulted my nostrils.
The cultists began to swap anxious looks with each other, not sure what to make of the strange sounds emanating from the vibrating telescoping.
I knew what was happening. The blood combined with the ancient spell had activated the terrible magic that would pierce the veil between worlds. There was no turning back now.
My attention returned to Rockmore. The leader obviously didn’t share the concerns of his followers. He didn’t care about the potential consequences of the ritual, confident that he was in control of the situation.
I knew he was in for a rude surprise. Conjuring demons doesn’t work out too well for most folks.
The light of the wards grew brighter, streaks of red, green, and blue energy bleeding into the observatory. Strange, multi-colored tendrils of supernatural light swirled through space and wove around the heads of Rockmore’s followers. Their eyes were shiny with stunned fascination. For most of them, the occult had been a game, a distraction from the terrible burden of being wealthy and bored. They were about to learn the hard way that practicing occult magic wasn’t the same as meeting up for a poker night.
The wards on the telescope were going supernova. A monstrous force from another world was pushing into our reality.
My gaze ticked back to Rockmore. He clutched the telescope with all his might, his voice trembling with growing excitement.
“Yes, yes. I see now…”
Elation swiftly turned to dread as the initial vision—no doubt temptingly beautiful to the cult leader—gave way to a far darker reality.
“No, it can’t be! Oh God, please!”
Rockmore finally realized he’d made a foolish mistake.
His voice broke, became a horrific scream that pierced the night.
Here we go, I thought.
The massive cylinder of the telescope had been gathering energy this entire time and now released it all one. An explosion of unbridled paranormal power swept through the observatory and engulfed the hapless cultists.
The fiery light enveloped Rockmore, and his body lit up as if a million-volt current had hit him. Seconds before the demonic energy erased him from reality, Rockmore looked like he was experiencing some sublime, transcendent knowledge. Whatever the ruthless, power-hungry bastard had done to reach this moment, he met his death with a smile.
A devastating roar tore through the structure, drowning out the human screams, and I feared my eardrums might pop. It sounded like the voice of an enraged Titan.
More beams of blistering supernatural blasted out of the lens of the telescope, the red-hot waves of scalding fire devouring everything in their path.
Pulsing beams of laser-like energy traveled up the walls and floor of the observatory while cracks started to form in the ceiling. I now understood why there were so many holes in the present-day version of the dome.
The foundation of the observatory shook, lashed by forces beyond the imagination of mortal men. For a split second, the structure grew transparent.Ripples shuddered through the walls and floor of the observatory, and another world stood revealed. I vaguely made out an endless grey void beyond the physical boundaries of the structure. Indistinct shapes darted through a swirling ocean of living darkness.
High above me, the domed ceiling continued to dissolve, battered by otherworldly forces. Sections of the roof came raining down, and I instinctively brought up my arms, unable to tell if what I was experiencing was real or an elaborate illusion.
The world turned pitch black, followed by a flash of searing light, and I was back inside the present-day observatory. The vision had stopped, vanishing with as much ferocity as it had arrived.
Why had the demon shown me the past? The question was simple. The entity wanted me to understand why my athame was the key to its freedom. It had imprisoned the beast, and it would now, a hundred years later, set it free.
I looked down and saw with horror that the geometric wards from the telescope had seared themselves into my skin. Of course. It made sense on some twisted level. I’d looked into the telescope the same way Plevins and Coleman had, allowing the entity to seed me with its evil. I had allowed the demon to gain access to my soul. The moment the beast had infected my mind with its darkness, the wards had appeared on my body.
The protective sigils were designed to spread to anyone touched by the monster's evil, multiplying like antibodies inside a body under attack from a foreign invader.
But I wasn’t like the other victims. I carried the athame that created the wards in the first place. And my magical knife was reacting to the wards in the only way it knew how. The blade started absorbing the three-dimensional geometric tattoos, breaking down the spell in a methodical fashion one ward at a time. The geometric patterns vanished from my skin, materialized on the double-sided blade, and then dissolved in a flash of metaphysical energy.
A glance confirmed that the athame’s magic extended to the telescope. It was stripping the wards from the stargazing device, too. As each ward dissolved, the cloying sense of evil inside the observatory intensified.
The demon was hungry for its first real taste of freedom. Once the last ward vanished, nothing could stop the beast from escaping from its cage. Each ward represented a link in a metaphysical chain, but the observatory was also a physical prison. Cracks erupted on the walls as this dark spirit truly flexed its muscles for the first time in a century.
I had no idea what the creature looked like, but to be honest, I also had no intention of finding out. See, I hadn’t walked in here without a plan. It had required a great mental effort to hide my true intentions from the demon, since I assumed it would probe my thoughts as soon as I entered its unholy domain. I had an ace up my sleeve, but before I could use it, there was one last thing I needed to do.
“I brought you the knife. Now give me the girl.”
Dark laughter sliced through my mind.
“How can someone who wields such power be so foolish? To sacrifice so much to save her, yet you are too terrified to tell her your feelings. I have seen inside your mind, Simon Kane. Are you truly such a coward?”
The mocking question cut to the bone, and it took me all my willpower not to carry out my secret plan right then and there. I did not come here to get dating advice from a demon.
No, not yet, I urged myself. Stay cool. First, make sure Vesper is okay.
I sucked in a lungful of air, tried to find my center.
> “We had a deal.”
Another peal of dark laugher ripped through my soul. At least the bastard found me amusing. It was toying with me. It never intended to let either of us go. As soon as the last ward disappeared from the telescope, all Hell would break loose. Literally. At that point, all deals would be off the table. The entity would devour Vesper and me before directing its dark appetite toward the world at large.
But as long as those last wards remained in place, the demon was forced to play along.
“Release her, or I’ll walk out of this place right now.”
“Why don’t you try?”
Even though the demon didn’t sound too impressed with my threat, the creature conceded to my demands. The floor rippled and spat out Vesper’s form, her body covered in a sticky, slimy ectoplasm. She choked and coughed and gasped for precious oxygen. Relief flooded my heart as I drew her close to me.
I made a vow right then and there: If we were lucky enough to walk away from this fight, I would tell Vesper how I felt about her. Life was too short to play games. Or to let fear hold you back.
Okay, maybe the demon had a point about my love life. But first, we had to survive this.
Another ward vanished from my forearm and appeared on the blade of my knife. I eyed the telescope. Only two of the geometric designs remained. I had less than a minute to make my move.
I gritted my teeth, said a quick prayer, and strode briskly toward the telescope. The observatory shook and lurched, almost as if the demon understood what I was up to. But it was too late to stop me.
Without hesitation, I rammed my humming athame right into the lens of the telescope. It felt like I was striking at the cyclopean eye of the beast who dwelled within these walls.
For a split second, nothing happened. And then cracks exploded across the telescope's lens. Glass fragments showed my face and sliced my skin as zig-zagging cracks spread across the large cylinder.
The telescope was the bridge between the dark dimension Rockmore had wanted to explore and our earthly plane. Shatter this link, and the demon would be free. But as long as one ward remained intact, it wouldn’t materialize in our world. Yes, I was setting the demon free…but just long enough to send it back to pit out of which it had crawled.
A bloodcurdling shriek of inhuman rage shattered my mind. The walls around me trembled and heaved and the dome sagged under its weight. For a moment, the breath of an alien world seemed to pass through the century-old structure. In the shimmering, transparent floor, something colossal and without coherent form was closing in on us, tentacle-like arms extending from an indescribable body.
The demon was going to drag us with it into Hell.
Not on my watch, buddy.
I grabbed Vesper’s hand and pulled my still groggy assistant back to her feet. Moments later, we were running toward the observatory’s shaking steel exit. There was no doubt in my mind that this whole damn structure was about to come tumbling down. Vesper and I had to get out of here.
Metal screeched in protest as the giant telescope spun on its gears like an out-of-control carousel ride. Any second now, the telescope would snap off its base and come hurtling toward us like a missile.
The observatory quaked in a final, powerful seizure as I shoved the steel door open. The nighttime forest was waiting for us on the other side of the threshold. Just a few more steps. We were going to make it!
The nape of my neck went ice cold, and my Ouroboros tattoo exploded with burning pain. The demon had breached the veil between our realities. I refused to look back, knowing that my puny mortal brain wouldn’t be able to handle the sight of the beast in its true form.
“Run!” I shouted, half-dragging Vesper across the threshold.
Cold air whipped our skin as we tore out of the observatory and ran into the forest. I welcomed the icy sting. It meant we were alive. After several minutes, our pace slackened, out of breath and strength.
The rumbling sounds behind me had stopped. Could it be all over?
I finally halted in my tracks and hazarded a glance back. Part of me feared I would see a disgusting mass of slime and flesh, but no such horrors lurked in the dark forest. The burning sensation in my shoulder had eased, suggesting the demonic force was finally gone. There was only the shell of the observatory in all it haunted glory. It was still standing—barely. Any moment now, the whole structure would collapse like a house of cards. The dome was almost gone already, and the walls leaned treacherously forward.
Snowflakes drifted down on us, and I pulled Vesper close. We both leaned into the embrace without hesitation, almost as if we’d been lovers for years. Our lips found each other and locked.
And for one brief moment, the horrors were far away.
The kiss seemed to last forever. Or at I wished it had.
When we finally pulled back, Vesper eyed me with a playful twinkle in her eyes.
“I guess we’ve been building up to that one for a while.”
“Vesper, I—”
The words died on my lips, and my blood turned to ice.
Behind us, the observatory had changed. My Malibu mansion had taken its place.
It can’t be.
The sleek modern mansion I called home grew from the frozen forest as if it had always been here. All the lights burned brightly in the night, and looming on the central balcony was a familiar figure.
I was looking up at my father, Mason Kane, leader of the Children of the Void.
And then the whole house exploded into whirling flames, turning night into day. As the heat of the blaze washed over my stricken features, the world went black.
The last thing I heard as I tumbled down the shaft of unconsciousness was my father’s cruel laughter.
Chapter Seventeen
My head was pounding when I woke up. The first thing I saw was Vesper’s lovely face. She smiled at me warmly, but her eyes were filled with concern. Gauze covered my head, and I was lying in a bed inside a white room.
“Welcome to the Bear Valley Community Hospital, Mr. Kane,” a man’s voice said.
I groggily turned toward a man in the white smock who stood on the other side of the bed.
“What happened?”
“You’ve been out cold for six hours,” the doctor said. “You suffered a light concussion. According to your assistant, you hit your head on a rock.”
Or a rock fell on my head. A piece of debris from the collapsing dome must’ve hit me as I ran out of the observatory, and I didn’t even notice it. Isn’t adrenaline great?
The heavy throbbing in the back of my skull made me groan, and I fought back the impulse to rub my bandages.
Strange to think that I could have survived a battle with a demon only to be done in by a rock. Ah, the life of a monster hunter.
The doc rattled off a few more boring stats, the gist of which was that I’d probably be fine, and then excused himself. Other patients were in need of his attention.
I fixed my gaze on Vesper. As much as I might be eager to get to more important matters than the glorified bruise on my head—such as kissing her again—there was a question I needed to ask.
“Did you see the mansion in the woods?” I hesitated for a beat, then added, “Did you see my father?”
Vesper looked at me with confusion. “What are you talking about, Simon?”
I took a steadying breath and gripped the metal armrests of the hospital bed. Had I imagined the whole thing due to my head injury, or had the demon left me with one final glimpse of his dark world—a realm where Mason Kane still held some power?
That question led to others. How had my father gotten his hands on the athame if the observatory had vanished from time and space a century ago? Had the magical knife been left behind, or did he somehow retrieve it during one of the observatory’s many appearances over the years? And what about Rockmore’s cult? Was there a connection with the Children of the Void, my father’s cult? Had Rockmore’s dark legacy influenced Mason Kane somehow?
&nbs
p; Vesper must have noticed the dark expression on my face because she leaned close and whispered in my ear.
“Don’t ever scare me like that again, Simon Kane.”
I looked at Vesper for a beat, wondering if I had also imagined our kiss in the woods.
Vesper leaned in and gently pressed her lips against mine, which settled that question.
I didn’t know how this would change our partnership moving forward. To be honest, I didn’t care.
As my hand slid up into her silky red hair, I pushed all thoughts of the horrors aside and lost myself in the warmth of the moment.
Soon enough, the nightmares would strike again, but today belonged to Vesper and me.
THE END
Simon Kane and Dakota Vesper will return.
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The Paranormalist: The Unearthly
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William Massa’s Night Hunters
Also by WILLIAM MASSA
THE NIGHT SLAYER SERIES
Midnight War
Monster Quest
Shadow Plague
World of Darkness
The Paranormalist 4: The Unearthly Page 10
