by Jamie Davis
Jo realized the pounding sound she heard was the blood pulsing past her ears in her arteries. It matched the throbbing pain in her head. She remembered being captured in the park and being struck from behind, and she stopped struggling. She turned her energy inward, listening for anyone else around her. Trying to open her eyes again, slowly this time, she again was forced to shut them after the bright overhead light caused waves of pain and vertigo to course through her head.
Damn, she thought, I’ve got a concussion. That would explain the light sensitivity and pain she was feeling. She slowed her breathing and tried to say a few healing incantations under her breath but the words were muddled and she couldn’t concentrate enough to direct the magic. It was the brain injury from the concussion that was muddling her thoughts and concentration so that she couldn’t cast the magic. She would have to try something else.
She needed to get a sense of her surroundings and she decided she had to look around, despite the pain the bright light caused her. She tried opening her eyes only far enough to let the tiniest amount of light in, and looked around through slitted eyelids. It still hurt, but it was bearable and she could see her surroundings.
There were boxes and assorted items of furniture in this room. The floor was concrete and the walls, where she could see them, were made of corrugated metal. The room appeared to be about twenty feet long by ten feet wide. She looked down and saw that she was secured in what appeared to be an old, metal desk chair on wheels. Her arms were duct-taped down to the arms of the chair. She couldn’t see her feet. They were pulled up under her with the souls of her feet facing behind her and the toes of her shoes resting on the floor.
Turning her head and looking around carefully, she could only see one part of the room. She thought she’d try something and attempted to push against the floor with her toes. She was rewarded when she started to swivel a bit in the chair. She tried again and again until she managed to turn around one hundred eighty degrees. That was when she found Jill, or what was left of her.
Jo forced herself to look even though she wanted to scream in terror. The woman’s body was stretched on an old wooden bed frame, fully assembled but without a mattress. Her body laid on the wooded slats that rested across the side rails, usually to support the mattress and box spring. In this case there was just the bare wood. The woman’s arms and legs were secured with ropes to the four bed posts.
Her lifeless eyes stared back at Jo, unseeing, glazed as they were with the film that covered them in death. She had bloody gashes in her chest and abdomen and what looked like burn marks on her arms and legs. The wound that probably killed her was the gaping slash across her throat. Jo noticed the metal basin on the floor set beneath her head and neck to catch the blood. She could see the dark pool of fluid there.
Wait, this didn’t make sense, Jo thought. Jill was the demon lord. Had some other hunter gotten here first? No, they wouldn’t have tortured her like this, they would have just killed or captured her. Could there be another demon in competition with the first one? Maybe it was the other demon that killed her, some sort of internal power struggle between the netherworlders?
Her mind was foggy, but she forced herself to puzzle it out and the realization struck her like a thunderbolt. Jill was never the demon. It had been Sam all along. He was the possessed one. He was the demon lord’s host. He had fooled them into looking for his wife and they had missed their chance to get him when they had him in their hands.
She knew where she was now. She was in the storage unit where she had scried for Jill. Something or someone had brought her here. This must be one owned by the couple and where Sam could commit his horrible rituals on his wife without anyone hearing them. If you came in here, on the outskirts of town, late at night, it was unlikely anyone else was checking their storage rooms. You’d have all the privacy you’d need to do whatever you wanted.
Jo pulled at her bonds again and tried to look around for a way to get free. She vaguely remembered a scaled hand clamping over her mouth. That meant that Sam had summoned another lesser demon to do his bidding, maybe more than one. That they had captured her and not merely killed her meant that Sam needed something from her - and the thought chilled her to the bone. She stared at Jill’s body in front of her and renewed her struggles to get free. If she were going to get out of this, she had to do it herself. No one else knew where she was.
Chapter 27
Dean was losing patience, but he didn’t let it show. Jaz was doing the best she could to track Jo’s phone signal. Jaz revealed that she had given Jo a sim card for her phone that worked on her family’s network plan when they got back to town after rescuing Ashley a few weeks before. The teen’s own device from the future didn’t work here in the past on its own, and had served only as a media playing device, serving up whatever music it was that the teen listened to when she retreated into her earbuds. With the addition of the sim card, Jo had been able to access the local phone network.
The new sim card meant that Jaz was able to track it, sort of. The phone’s GPS system had localized them to the park but they had been unable to narrow their search down to less than a one hundred by one hundred yard square wooded area at the center. Now the two of them were scanning the ground, a step at a time, playing their flashlights back and forth as they tried to find some clue, and hopefully their daughter.
They had tried to call it at first, hoping they would hear the ring as they walked around. They soon realized it must have the ringer set to silent. Now they had resorted to a step by step search of the entire area after a quick sweep had shown them nothing. Dean took his time, trying to keep his emotions under control as he searched.
There was evidence that Jo had been involved in a break-in at the Elk City Historical Society building. They had heard the report over the police scanner in Jaz’s SUV. He was not sure what Jo had been looking for at the museum. The police did not report anything about what was missing over the radio. They only reported on video in the security cameras showing a girl matching Jo’s description.
Another report had come in saying someone had seen a girl running into the park, but police officers on the scene had searched and sent back that they had found nothing. Now that Jaz had tracked Jo to the park, it confirmed those reports were probably accurate. His thoughts swirled through the events of the night over and over again as he searched for the missing phone and his daughter.
He was thinking through this jumble of thoughts when his flashlight caught a glint of a reflection on the ground ahead. He ran forward and shouted with relief when he reached down and picked up the phone. He called to Jaz, waving the discovered phone over his head in triumph. He spun around as Jaz came over to him. He shined the light in all directions, trying to pierce the gloom around him. Jo had been here, she must be close by.
“Jo. Jo,” he called. “Where are you? Are you out there?”
Jaz joined him and called out as well. Their only answers were the resumed chirping of crickets in the darkness surrounding them. Dean’s shoulders slumped as he looked at the phone in his hand. He pressed the button to activate the screen and saw all their phone calls to her listed on the notifications there.
“Here, let me take a look,” Jaz asked. Dean handed her the phone and she tapped a security code in to get past the lock screen, opening up the phone’s access.
“How did you know her password?”
“I didn’t. All the phones in our plan for Errington Security have an override to wipe the phones in case they are stolen. It works on the sim cards, too. I used that to open the phone.” Jaz gave him a grim smile. “It pays sometimes to be paranoid security types.”
She tapped around on the screen, opening different apps. “I’m trying to see what she was doing before she dropped it. It looks like she was looking at the maps app on the phone.”
“Could she have cast the scrying spell on her own and found Jill? She wouldn’t have gone after her on her own would she?”
Jaz cast him a
sideways glance. “You were a teenager not that long ago just like me. What would you have done?”
“I get your point. So where was she searching for on the maps app?”
“It looks like she was looking for this address on the outskirts of town. Do you recognize it?”
Dean looked at the screen when she turned it to him and shrugged. He watched as Jaz took out her phone and entered the address into a search program and the address popped up right away as a self-storage facility.
“That could be where Jill is hiding,” Jaz said.
“But we have no way of knowing if Jo went there. She wouldn’t have left her phone here. Could she have been taken and dropped the phone?” Dean was starting to get anxious.
Jaz took his hand in hers. “Look at me, Dean. We need to work together and stay calm. We’ll find her. This is the best lead we have right now.”
He gave her hand a squeeze and looked around in the darkness. He felt responsible for yelling at Jo and making her feel guilty about the attack at the mall. His reaction to her going out on her own may have forced Jo’s hand to run off like this. Jaz was right, though. He had to keep his head on straight and not overreact. It was time to take action.
His phone buzzed in his pocket and he took it out to see a number he didn’t recognize. He tapped the screen to answer and put it on speaker so Jaz could here. The voice on the other end was garbled as if it were being run through a computer program to alter it.
“Hello Mr. Flynn. I have your witch girl and know you have found her phone. I left it so you would know that I have her.”
“Don’t you hurt her,” Dean blurted out.
“That is entirely up to you and Miss Errington. Can she hear me?”
“I am here,” Jaz answered. “What can we do for you? I assume you want something,”
“You know very well what I want. I want the idol. It belongs to me. It belongs with the others like it.” Dean listened to the voice, trying to decide if it was a man or a woman. He couldn’t tell. The computer voice alteration was too good.
“If we bring you the idol, what guarantee do we have that Jo is still alive and will remain that way?” Dean asked.
“Say something to your friends, witch,” the voice said.
There was a pause, then Dean and Jaz heard Jo’s voice clearly over the phone. “Mom, Dad. I’m in a storage shed or something …” Her voice broke off suddenly with a yelp.
“Jo, are you there?” Dean called out into the phone.
“She is quite alright, for now, Mr. Flynn. Whether she stays that way is up to you. You have one hour to come up with the idol. I will turn this phone number back on in sixty minutes and leave it on for exactly one minute. If you don’t call me in that minute for instructions, I’ll assume you want your friend to die and I will oblige you. Is that understood?”
Dean looked at Jaz. She gazed back at him and nodded. “I agree. You’ll get my call in one hour.”
“Very well,” the altered voice said. “I look forward to your call in sixty minutes from now.”
The call disconnected and Dean saw Jaz take out her phone and set a timer for sixty minutes.
“What do we do now?” Dean asked. He paused and continued. “We have to get the idol from your apartment and get it to him.”
“Whatever happens, Dean, we cannot let Sam get his hands on the third idol. It will enable him to fully manifest on this plane. You have no idea what a demon lord can do if he is able to walk physically on this earth.”
“So we let Jo die?” Dean was astonished with her callousness.
“I didn’t say that, Dean. We have to try and rescue her. I agree. I just want you to understand that we cannot let the idol fall into his hands. No matter what else happens, that cannot occur. If we have to kill Jill, or me or you, or even Jo, we cannot let that happen. Do you understand?”
Dean thought about it. He had seen what kind of carnage even lesser demons loose on the earth could cause. It made him cringe at the thought of what a demon lord would do with all the power to summon lesser demons at his command. He met Jaz’s eyes and nodded. “I understand. We can’t let that happen. So what’s the plan?”
“We have an advantage that Jill doesn’t know about. We know where she is. At least, I think I know where she is.”
“The storage facility?” Dean asked.
“It has to be where she’s taken Jo. That’s where she is if the scrying spell worked at all and Jo’s map query is correct.” Jaz looked around. “We need to be careful, Dean. I think we’re being watched. She knew when we found Jo’s phone.”
Dean realized she was right and looked around in the darkness, too, scanning the brush and trees with his flashlight. The thought of being watched caused the hairs on the back of his neck to rise and sent a chill down his spine.
“Let’s go back to the SUV and finish talking while we drive,” Jaz said. She started in the direction of the paved path through the woods in the city park, heading back towards the parking lot.
Dean looked over his shoulder once more as he followed her. It took them ten precious minutes to return to the parking lot and climb into the vehicle. Jaz sat in the driver’s seat and looked at Dean next to her. He closed his door and returned her gaze.
“Alright, Dean here’s what we’re going to do.”
Dean listened and nodded as Jaz’s plan for Jo’s rescue unfolded. She had done hostage rescues before with her security team background so he had faith in her planning. She also had a whole lot more experience with demons and their ilk than he did. It was not without its risks and a lot was going to rely on him since he was the only team she had to work with.
She finished laying out the plan, then started the SUV and drove off into the night. They had a lot to do in one hour.
Chapter 28
Dean watched as Jaz plugged a laptop into the case open on the dashboard in front of her. He was driving so she could get the gear set up in time. She reached over and toggled a switch, then looked at the result on the computer screen. The resulting nod seemed to indicate everything was working correctly. In theory, she had told him, this equipment would be able to track the incoming call from the caller to his cell phone.
They hadn’t had much time, with only an hour to get the summoning idol and the gear Jaz said she needed. Now as the final minutes counted down to the deadline, they sped through the night towards the storage facility they found on Jo’s phone. It was a gamble, but Jaz was convinced it had to be the location of the demon lord’s hideout. That was where they would find Jill, and it was likely they would find Jo there as well.
The tracking system would help them localize the caller. If they were right, it would target the source of the call in the storage facility. That gave them the advantage of surprise, since Jill wouldn’t know they were close by at the time of the call. It would all work, if their hunch on her location was correct.
Dean pulled the SUV over to the curb one block away from the location. He looked at Jaz and she returned his look with a grim smile. He knew she couldn’t give him any guarantees Jo would be safe. He wanted them anyway.
They were both startled when the timer on Jaz’s phone went off signifying the end of the hour. Dean tapped the phone to redial the number. Dean’s phone buzzed as the call rang through to the other side. It was plugged into the box on the dash and they each had a set of ear buds to hear the call while it was patched through the system. Dean waited for their mysterious caller to pick up on the other end.
He tried to sound calm and took a deep breath before he spoke, “Hello, Dean here.”
“Well, well. Your call is prompt. I like that,” the electronically altered voice responded. “Do you have the idol?”
“Let me talk with Joanna,” Dean said. “I have it, but we go no further until you prove to me she’s alive and unharmed.”
“You are in no position to bargain, Mr. Flynn.”
“Neither are you. Let me talk to her,” Dean said as he flinched. Jaz had gone
over the need to continue to request proof of life throughout the process. They had to keep Jo alive through the exchange. It was an important part of their plan.
“Very well. I will fetch her.” There was a pause and Dean looked over at Jaz who was leaning over the computer in her lap, tapping keys and watching the screen. She saw him looking over at her and she made a stretching and pulling motion with the fingers of both hands. He needed to keep the caller on the phone longer for the trace to work.
There was some noise of someone fumbling with the handset of the phone on the other end and then he heard Jo’s voice.
“Daddy, are you there?”
“I’m here, Jo. We’re going to get you out of this. Just hold on. Alright?” Dean said.
“Alright, I will,” Jo answered. There was more fumbling on the phone again and then the garbled voice returned.
“There, you have your proof she’s still alive. Now you are going to do exactly what I say. You will bring the idol, alone, to site of the Errington building fire. Wait by the construction entrance gate for further instructions. You have ten minutes to get there. Your time starts now.”
“If you don’t bring Jo, we don’t give you the idol,” Dean blurted out to try and keep them on the line. There was nothing but a click as the caller hung up.
Dean looked over at Jaz and breathed a sigh of relief as she pumped her fist and gasped “Yes! We’ve got her.”
“Really?”
“Yep, they are here in the storage facility, just ahead of us,” Jaz said. “Pull the SUV up next to the fence. We can get on the roof and climb over to get inside. We’ve got to hurry. He will have to leave soon to get to the construction site in time to make the exchange. We have to catch them outside of the unit.”
“Can you tell which unit they’re in?” Dean asked.