by Sara Snow
“Are you here by yourself? Where are your mom and dad?”
With a noise like a cork popping out of a bottle, her thumb burst from her mouth. “I lost my daddy,” she lisped. The inside of her snaggletoothed mouth seemed darker than normal, like the depths of a well. “He left me in the store.”
She was so familiar.
Now I knew why.
Wandering through a market in some run-down neighborhood, looking for the guy who was supposed to be taking care of me today. He dragged me with him to the corner market so he could buy more beer and get me a chocolate milk to shut me up for a few hours. The comic book rack caught my attention. Only a minute, I swear. I looked up. He was gone.
Out of all the terrifying experiences that I’d had in the past few weeks, all of the demonic visions I’d seen, the hell-beasts I’d encountered, this had to be the worst.
I was standing face-to-face with myself, fifteen years ago.
This was too much for my mind to absorb. The shelves stacked with groceries seemed to whirl around me. The checkered tiles on the floor spun in a black-and-white blur. My knees buckled, and I would have fallen if that creepy little Mini-Me hadn’t grabbed my hand.
“Come help me find him,” she said. It was a command, spoken in a much deeper voice than the one I’d heard moments ago.
The only difference I could see between this child and my past self was her eyes. When I was that age, people were already commenting on the strange, violet hue of my irises. This little weirdo’s eyes were twin black wells, with no visible surrounding color at all.
With a grip as strong as a steel clamp, the kid began pulling me down the aisle. I tried to jerk my arm free, but I couldn’t break out of that sticky grasp.
At that late hour, there were only a handful of shoppers in the market. My cries for help rang through empty aisles. The few shoppers who did notice me just stared, open-mouthed, at the sight of a grown woman being abducted by a five-year-old.
A five-year-old with the hauling power of a locomotive.
Where the fuck is Jacob? Does he even know I’m being dragged to my death by demon spawn?
“Where are you taking me?” I screamed at the child.
She turned and gave me a smile so malevolent that it turned my blood to ice.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” she said. The words were spoken in the same gravelly voice that I’d heard from the demon who had come to my apartment disguised as a cop.
That was the same demon who took me to a park and gave me the fabulous option of being eviscerated or burned with a branding iron. Had Jacob actually killed the demon who kidnapped me? Or had the monster somehow been resurrected so that he could continue his career of sadism and torture?
Maybe all of Paimon’s minions spoke in those distorted, metallic tones. They didn’t get a lot of practice conversing with humans, after all, unless they were abducting them, torturing them, or impregnating them with their demonic seed.
Demonic seed. That’s what this girl was—the little brat was a changeling. I was being abducted by the product of a demon and human copulating, not unlike the whirlwind affair that led to my birth.
But wait. If this kid were dragging me into the middle of a showdown, why not give the demons something to tell all their friends about? This would be the perfect opportunity for me to flex my new pyrotechnic muscles and burn some demonic ass.
Now, we were hurrying through the parking lot, heading for the corner farthest from the supermarket. At this time of night, no one had parked all the way out there, except for someone who had left a Moped leaning against a security lamp.
High above our heads, I heard the beating of leathery wings, and I braced myself.
The changeling vanished as two demons swooped down on me like gargoyles descending from the night sky. Each of them took hold of one of my arms, and together, they pulled me toward the edge of the lot. I twisted and thrashed in their double grip.
Let them think I’m struggling. Wait till they see what’s coming next.
I focused on the bike. That wasn’t easy to do, with two evil creatures hauling me into the darkness as fast as they could go. The Moped resisted at first, but then it gradually rose, and in seconds, it was fully airborne.
The Moped whirled through the air, moonlight glinting off its metal trim. The demons gaped at the bike as it hovered in mid-air. I poured every ounce of my energy into focusing on that damn bike, making it gather speed and power as it flew in our direction.
Seconds before the bike collided with us, the demons threw me to the asphalt.
The Moped missed all three of us and smashed into the ground. Now the demons had me pinned. One of them held my arms down while the other clutched my legs. They were right on top of me, too close for me to turn them into a pair of matching tiki torches.
Then, I heard the sound of running footsteps.
Jacob. Finally!
“Georgia! What the fuck is happening?”
“What does it look like?” I shouted. “Help me!”
Jacob grabbed the demon who held my arms and dragged him off me, tossing him onto the ground. I kicked at the other demon with all my might, breaking his grasp on my legs, then focused my mind on throwing him as far as I could. The demon sailed into the air and crashed head-first into a lamppost.
Jacob had tackled the first demon, flattening him onto the asphalt. The creature screeched and hissed, trying to claw at Jacob’s back, but Jacob held him down. Watching them fight, I missed the other demon rushing at me. I caught sight of him just in time to shoot a stream of fire at him and set him ablaze. The scream that rose from his burning body was music to my ears.
I turned to look for Jacob. He stood behind me, with the surviving demon cowering underneath him. Suddenly, he raised his right arm.
“By all the seraphim in Heaven, I banish you!” Jacob shouted. “And tell all your friends down there that if they have the guts to join you here on Earth, they’re going to end up barbecued just like him. You’re safer in Hell!”
The demon squawked in rage. His body disintegrated into a cloud of black particles that whirled into the air, then vanished into the night sky.
Jacob ran over to me. He was panting from the exertion, making puffs of white smoke burst from his mouth in the cold night air.
“Anything broken?” he asked.
I patted my arms and legs gingerly. “I’m sore. But if anything’s broken, it’ll heal by the time we leave tomorrow.”
We stood there grinning at each other, pumped from the rush of our victory.
“Listen, Georgia,” Jacob said. “You know what this means, don’t you?”
“Yeah. It means that someone’s going to need a ride home from work tonight.” I nodded at the wrecked Moped.
“No, I’m not talking about that.” He laughed. “I’m talking about you and your pyrokinesis. With you on our team, we’re going to demolish Paimon and his gang. They don’t have a chance. We’re going to have a mini-Armageddon in El Paso, and you’re going to be leading the charge.”
He raised his hand and high-fived me, then took me in his arms and gave me a hug that took my breath away.
“But you know, it’s a good thing I showed up when I did,” he said, when he broke the embrace. “I mean, I know you were kicking butt, but you took a risk going at it alone. Who knows what else might have showed up to help those demons? You should have waited for me to come out and join you.”
“Hey,” I said defensively. “You’re the one who left me in the store.”
“You’re the one who wandered off,” Jacob corrected me. “We should have stayed together. I guess I need to handcuff you to my wrist from now on.”
“Sounds kinky,” I said. The image was mildly arousing, but I was too shaken to follow up on it.
“I know how much you love your independence . . .”
“Yeah. I do.”
“But for the time being, don’t go off on your own. Paimon and the other two kings are too crafty.
They can take the form of just about anything, or anyone—you should know that from the first time you were abducted. We are the only ones you can trust. It’s fine to be the hero, but only if you have backup.”
“And what if I don’t?” I asked. “With the new power I have, what’s the worst they can do to me?”
Jacob’s grin vanished. “They can turn you into one of them, Georgia. You have to understand: they don’t want to kill you. That’s the last thing they want. They want to use you for their own purposes, and that would make you as evil as they are. And I care way too much about you to let anything like that happen. Got it?”
I was quiet for a second. I gazed into Jacob’s eyes, looking for a trace of his usual humor, but he was dead serious this time.
“Yeah. I got it.” Something else occurred to me as I studied his face. He looked different, more mature, and it wasn’t just his serious expression. “Speaking of serious power, I’d heard you had the ability to banish demons after what you did with Jose, but seeing it in action was something else.”
He grinned, which brought out that dimple and made him look more like the usual Jacob. “That’s only the third time I’ve done it. Pretty cool, huh?”
“I think you’re pretty cool in general. But yes, you blew that guy away. Too bad you can’t blow all those fuckers back to Hell.”
“Who knows? Maybe I will someday. I’ve only ever taken on a few at a time. I’m still learning what I’m capable of.”
Jacob took me in his arms and held me again. This time, he wasn’t trying to come off like a buddy or a big brother. He was telling me something with the tension of his muscles and the rapid rhythm of his heartbeat that I wasn’t ready to hear him say out loud.
But I could read that message with my body, and it made my heart glow. I wondered if Jacob had more to offer than I’d realized—maybe more than Carter was ready to offer.
14
Georgia
By the time we got back to the warehouse, it was almost midnight. As the official driver and owner of the vehicle, Carter had mandated that we leave before dawn. Supposedly, he wanted to get on the road early so we would have the whole day to drive, but I suspected it had more to do with his dislike of the early morning sun. Even with the tinted windows of his car and a sun visor on his windshield, the first rays of daylight made him cringe.
Jacob escorted me upstairs to my room, one arm wrapped around my waist for support. I was wiped out from that encounter with the changeling and her henchmen, and my eyes were closing even as we climbed the stairs.
I had no intention of letting that creepy little girl, my Mini-Me from long ago, insert herself in my dreams. Meeting her tonight had been enough of a nightmare.
At the door of my room, I said goodnight to Jacob and reached for the doorknob. He placed his arm across the doorframe, blocking the way inside.
“I just wanted to let you know that you were incredible in that parking lot,” he said softly. He tipped my chin and looked straight into my eyes. “I’ve never known a girl who could keep her head together when her life was threatened by demons. But you ruled tonight.”
“Who said I kept my head together?” I scoffed. “I was freaking out from the second I realized that the weird little girl was a changeling. Besides, I doubt you know that many women whose lives are threatened by minions from Hell on a regular basis.”
“No, I don’t,” he admitted. “In fact, you’re the only one. But that doesn’t make you any less amazing—it just means you have no competition. Not yet, anyway.”
I kicked him playfully in the shin. “If you ever meet a woman who can compete with me, I’ll kick her butt.”
“Wow. Was that a note of jealousy?”
“Maybe.” I tipped my head. “I think I’m starting to like you. After all, you’ve saved my life twice.”
“Correction—I saved your life once. You saved your own life tonight. I just prevented that one Hell monster from coming back and grabbing both of us. He’ll have a great story to tell his friends when he gets back to the fiery furnace tonight.”
Jacob hadn’t moved his arm away from the door. He had moved closer to me, so close that I could practically feel the desire thrumming through his body.
I’m not sure who made the first move, but before I knew it, I was engulfed in Jacob’s arms and lost in a kiss. He moved me away from the door and backed me against the wall, gently restraining my wrists so I couldn’t run away from him again. Desire for him spread through my body like a wildfire, from the pit of my belly to the tips of my breasts. Our lips and tongues melded, parted, then melded again, and each time we sank deeper into each other.
When Jacob moved his mouth from my lips to my throat and began to nuzzle my neck, I almost moaned in frustration. Why did this have to happen tonight, when we had to be up before sunrise? And why here, with Jose trying to sleep next door, and Kingston and Eli right down the hall?
“Can I come in?” Jacob whispered into the hollow of my throat.
He pressed his hips against mine, and I felt the hardness between his thighs. My traitor of a body softened against him, urging him to move in even closer. My whole being had turned liquid, and I could have said yes so easily . . .
“Not tonight,” I whispered back. “We’ve got an early wake-up call and hordes of demons on our tail. And I’m exhausted. This isn’t a good time.”
The look of longing on Jacob’s face faded a little. He slowly let me go.
“I gotcha,” he said, his voice soft with regret. “I’ll let you get some rest while I go take an ice-cold shower.”
“You do that. It’ll build character.”
He grinned and cupped my cheek in his hand. “I’ll let you go to bed. But you can count on an early wake up call.”
Whistling softly to himself, Jacob walked off down the hallway. I heard his feet moving rapidly down the stairs. When I was sure he was gone, I opened the door to my room, went inside, and locked it behind me. Then, I barricaded the door with chairs and a bedside table.
Sure, the demons can get in if they want to. But at least this way, I’ll hear them before they beat down the door.
Georgia
A thousand tiny candles formed a pathway through the night. I walked slowly down that aisle of golden light, so slowly that I felt like I was walking through deep water. The scent of flowers, almost sickeningly sweet, rose from a bouquet I carried.
When I looked down at the bouquet, I saw that the white flowers were brown at the edges. A fly buzzed through the blossoms, and decaying petals fell onto my white dress. First one fly, then two, then a swarm of flies followed me and my rotting bouquet.
The only thing that protected me from the insects was a short, filmy veil that fell over my eyes. Through that veil, I could only see the candlelit trail ahead of me. I wanted to scream, run, but my ankles were stuck in a thick, gluey substance, and every footstep took an eternity.
Panic squeezed my chest. I was suffocating behind that veil. I couldn’t breathe, but I had to keep lurching forward, clutching my rotten bouquet.
The crowned figure rose up in front of me like a wall. Blinded by the veil, I ran smack into him. I looked up, but I couldn’t see his face. I couldn’t move my hands or feet. He lifted the veil off my forehead. His eyes met mine—red orbs in a chiseled face with a reddish-brown goatee. His mouth curved at one corner in a knowing smile.
He wore a crown of fire.
You are incredible, he said. His voice was seductive and deeply comforting at the same time. You are miraculous, and you are mine.
A drum began to beat in the darkness. The candles roared to life, rising into walls of flame. The heat and smoke from the wall of fire made me choke and cough.
He reached out his arms, inviting his daughter to dance.
I woke up, gasping for air and slick with sweat. Someone was knocking on my door, making my barricade of furniture rattle.
Jacob. He had threatened to wake me up early, and he was making good on his promise.
Outside the window, I couldn’t see even a hint of dawn’s early light.
I jumped out of bed and hurried to the door to pull away the chairs and table. I didn’t want Jacob to push the door open and find my makeshift barricade. He would think I was absolutely nuts, and worse, scared.
“Just a second!” I called. “I’m not decent yet!”
I rushed around the room, looking for something to throw on over my naked body. I usually didn’t sleep in the nude, but apparently, I’d peeled off my t-shirt and panties last night while I was dreaming about the fire.
The images from that bizarre dream were burned into my memory, but I didn’t have time to analyze them. I needed to put on some clothes, open the door, and get started on this doomed journey.
Finally, I found a bathrobe crumpled on the floor of my closet and pulled it over my body. I ran my fingers through my hair to smooth it down as much as possible, then threw open the door.
“Listen, Jacob, I know you said you’d be here early, but this is insane. It’s still dark—”
Carter stood in the doorway. Instead of his usual, sardonic smile, he wore a sheepish expression, and he looked like he needed a shave.
“What’s with the five a.m. shadow?” I asked. “Were you out on the prowl again last night?”
His dark eyebrows rose, and he actually looked startled. “What are you talking about? I’ve been here all night. I was down in the library with Kingston until a couple of hours ago, until I finally realized I needed to get some sleep.”
“So, why aren’t you still in bed? It’s not even dawn yet, Carter. Forget about the Tenebris chasing us—you’ll kill us all when you fall asleep at the wheel!”
Carter took a deep breath. “Can I come in, Georgia? I need to talk to you.”
What was this, some kind of conspiracy? I hadn’t had sex since my last human boyfriend dumped me for my roommate, and now, suddenly, within less than six hours, two different men had tried to invade my boudoir.