by Terry Spear
She closed her eyes and sighed.
Samson’s cell phone rang, and her eyes popped open. He immediately rose from the bed, jerked his phone out, and looked at the ID. “Hunter,” he said.
She wanted to ask for the phone, but it was Samson’s, and she was supposed to be resting. So, despite her wanting to be in charge of the situation and know immediately what Hunter and the others had found, she waited, impatiently.
Until Samson swore. “Right away.” He shoved the phone in his pocket, yanked his keys out of his other pocket, then pulled Alana from the bed.
“Hey,” she said in protest.
“Matusa is nearby.”
She gritted her teeth. “I’m going to kill Jared. If he’d left one of his demon tracker devices with us, we would have known it before it was nearly too late.”
“Wait.”
It was already too late, she feared.
Samson shifted into a mist and slipped under the door. Not good. So not good.
A knock at the door sounded almost immediately after that. She stood frozen, staring at the door. Then something jiggled in the keyhole. If it was a key, it had to be Hunter with the others, right? Wishful thinking. If it had been Hunter, Samson would have sifted back into the room.
She hurried into the bathroom, looking for an escape route. No windows in there. No other windows in the hotel room except the ones facing the parking lot right next to the door. The key wasn’t opening the door as quickly as it should if it was really the key for the room.
A thump followed and a string of curses. It wasn’t Hunter, or Samson, or Jared. Someone else. Male, gruff, angry.
She wanted to help Samson, never having felt so unsure of herself before. Another thump. A grunt. Another slew of profanity. Then quiet.
Forever, she waited for a response. Nothing. She told herself to head for the door. To open it. To see what had happened. Fear took hold. If Samson wasn’t returning, what would she do outside the room? Fight a Matusa? Alone. And if he was no longer there? She couldn’t go anywhere anyway. Standing in front of the hotel was bound to get her into more trouble.
Then she heard the key again. Samson. What had happened to Samson? She didn’t care if he thought he was her protector. She had every notion of being one of the team and that meant being there with them to help during a fight.
The door clicked. Unlocked.
Samson would have sifted back into the room as mist rather than suddenly appearing in front of her room in human form, risking that someone might see him. Wouldn’t he have?
The door opened. She braced herself, ready to cast a spell. Hunter filled the doorway and rushed in, and stopped to see her standing there, hands up, ready to blast him with a water spell, if he’d been a fire demon. Her heart began beating again.
“Hunter,” she said with relief, then hurried toward him. “Where’s Samson?”
“He’s supposed to be protecting you,” he said gruffly and took hold of her hand.
“He was. He went outside and… I believe he was fighting the Matusa,” she said, defending Samson for having left her.
Hunter squeezed her hand, but none of the strain in his expression eased as he pulled her out of the hotel room where Jared and Celeste waited just outside. “We have to get you out of here.”
“But Samson…”
“He’ll find us. It’s his job to protect you. He knows you can’t stay here.”
“Uh, you want me to go home, right?” Celeste said, as she climbed into the driver’s seat. “But… if I leave you off at Alana’s car where you’ve hidden it, the cops will be looking for it and her, won’t they?”
“Yeah. Take us to the airport,” Hunter said. “We’ll get a rental car there.”
“You’re not coming with us, Celeste?” Alana asked. She could see the disappointment etched in Celeste’s expression, and she really did belong with them, Alana thought.
“She can’t,” Hunter said, moving Alana to the back seat of Celeste’s car, then he slid in beside her.
“You let her drive?” Alana asked, shocked.
Hunter scooted closer to Alana and smiled. “Why not? It’s her car.”
“Yeah, but you never let me drive even when it’s my car.” Not that she really cared much who was driving, except it was Hunter’s so controlling I’m-in-charge attitude that got to her at times. “So why does Celeste have to go?”
“She has to return to school. Your mother can say she’s homeschooling you. Celeste needs to return home to her parents.”
“Foster parents,” Celeste said crisply.
“Or they’ll think she’s a missing teen. We can’t afford to have her with us,” Hunter said. “We’ve already got enough trouble.”
Alana didn’t like the idea. Celeste should be with them. She was one of them. In the future, Celeste was bound to get herself into trouble if she was on her own. “Even if I homeschool, it won’t work. The police will be after me for disappearing at the police station,” Alana reminded Hunter.
“Yeah, which means we’ll have to let your mother know we’re taking you somewhere else.”
“I will.” Alana leaned against Hunter and he wrapped his arms around her in a warm embrace. This was why she really had missed him, she had to admit to herself. His gruffness, his pretense that she couldn’t live without him, when he truly cared for her, too, his tenderness at times like this.
“Are you still tired?” he asked.
“Yeah.” She wasn’t about to tell him that Samson’s watching T.V. had deterred her from sleeping. Hunter was already irritated enough about the Samuria’s interest in her so anything Samson did that annoyed her, exacerbated the situation between them. “I was in my astral form for three and a half hours because of the police interrogation. I’m not sure what happened. It’s like once I was there, even if the portal was closed, I couldn’t return to my physical form. When you opened the other portal, I was drawn back and was able to finally join my astral self with my physical one.”
Jared cleared his throat.
Hunter said, “What, Jared?”
“Maybe now that we’ve got Alana with us and she can use her witchy powers, we could drop by the hospital morgue. She can do her spooky thing with controlling minds and have them turn over the summoner’s personal effects.”
Hunter looked at Alana to see her take on it.
“Sure. If it will help locate the summoner’s portal devices, it sounds good to me.”
“All right. We’ll go there first,” Hunter agreed.
Celeste detoured to the hospital.
Alana spoke with her mother telepathically to let her know what was going on, avoiding using the phone in the event the police were monitoring them.
“Mom, are you okay?”
“I’m home. Where are you?” Definitely her mother sounded on edge. Alana couldn’t blame her. After Alana began having demonic powers, her mother had to acknowledge that Alana’s father’s genes had also passed to her. Ever since that had happened, her life had been out of her control.
Which meant? Her mother truly didn’t recognize her any longer as far as knowing what Alana’s demon half was capable of. Neither did Alana truly understand herself.
“I’m safe, but I have a Matusa demon after me.” She couldn’t tell her mother where she actually was. She knew her mother would protect her at all costs. But Alana wasn’t the only one out there with the ability to control minds. She often wondered why witches and warlocks weren’t on the police force more often—to help catch the bad guys. Maybe because if they did use their abilities, strictly humans would suspect them of being unnatural. Sure. Just like they did with human psychics. Although she often wondered if those who had the abilities were actually like her. Well, not exactly like her. Not half demon, anyway. But the witch part instead.
“You know, the bad kind of demon.” She wasn’t sure her mother remembered that the Matusa were the really bad kind. “Hunter and Jared are here with me now. We’ve lost Samson, but we’re s
ure he’ll catch up soon. We have a new friend named Celeste.”
“Another demon?” her mother asked, sounding shocked. Her mother was really with it as far as mothers went. She had to be if she was going to be able to sanely deal with Alana’s half demon heritage.
“Yes, but she’s going to have to stay clear of us or cause problems with her foster parents. I’ll most likely have to leave the area until we can find a way to pin the murder at the zoo on the Matusa who did it.”
“Alana,” her mother said, her voice choked with emotion.
Alana hated hearing her mother upset. “I’ll be all right, really. On my own, no. But together we can manage this.”
Her mother didn’t say anything.
“Momma.”
“They’re watching the house. The cops are.”
“I won’t come home. If we have to meet, I’ll get in touch with you telepathically.”
“Alana…”
“Yeah?”
“You make sure if you stay in a hotel with those boys, you have a room to yourself. All right?”
Alana smiled. “Yeah, Mom, I will. What happened at the police station? When I vanished?”
“They had a massive teen hunt at the station. They looked everywhere and were sure I was involved in hiding you somehow. That we had some kind of secret communiqué when you left. They believed you were using some kind of ultra-advanced electronic device that made the policewoman who accompanied you believe you were with her, but had gone a different direction and escaped. Just like at the zoo.”
“And they think I’m guilty.”
Her mother didn’t respond.
“Okay, well we have to find the Matusa and offer him up as the murderer. It’ll be fine. I’ll talk to you later. Love ya.”
“Love you back, honey. I’m glad you have your friends. Be safe.”
Alana closed her eyes and rested more soundly against Hunter’s shoulder. She smiled at her mother’s words. She wasn’t as worried that Alana was facing another devil of a Matusa demon, but that she might share a bed with one of her demon hunter friends. But she truly was a pretty cool mom. What other mother would be glad her daughter had a bunch of demonic friends?
“You spoke to your mother?” Hunter asked quietly.
She looked up at him. “How did you know?”
“You furrowed your brow and had a faraway look in your eyes.”
She closed her eyes. “I could have been astral traveling.”
“You don’t furrow your brows when you do that,” Hunter said.
“Oh.”
“Is your mother all right?”
“Sure. The house is being watched. I’m sure she realizes that with friends like you, I’ll be okay.”
Hunter didn’t say anything for a while, then he chuckled.
“What?”
“You’ve never said I could be useful before.”
“Don’t let it go to your head.”
He held her closer and kissed the top of her head.
“She’s talking about all of us,” Jared piped up.
Alana smiled, but didn’t respond.
“Right,” Hunter said in a way that meant he didn’t believe it at all—at least to his way of thinking. Alana was talking about him, and only him. “We’ll have to pick up some things for you, Alana.”
Jared shook his head. “My parents will think I’m picking up clothes for a girlfriend. I’d get the third degree and then what will I say?”
He wasn’t grouchy about it, like Alana thought he might be, but sounded rather proud that he was the one who always paid the bills. Compliments of extremely wealthy parents who had a spare-no-expense-on-their-adopted-son attitude.
“Just tell them your girlfriend is a gorgeous brown-eyed, blonde named Celeste,” Alana said. Heck, if Samson wasn’t interested in Celeste, maybe Jared would be.
“Right,” Jared said, in an annoyed way.
Celeste pulled into the hospital parking lot and gave Jared an irritated look. “I’d rather date a Matusa.” She glanced back at Hunter. “No offense.”
“I’d figure you were just a little crazy,” Hunter said.
“I was being facetious,” Celeste responded.
Hunter gave her a small smile, then began issuing orders. “Okay, you and Jared stay with the car. Alana and I will go into the morgue.”
“Do you have one of the demon detectors?” Alana asked Hunter.
“Yeah.”
She gave Jared a scowl. “It would have been nice if I’d had one at the hotel.”
Hunter frowned. “You’re right. I was afraid you might try to go after one when you should have been resting. But you should have known the Matusa was nearby. You take mine. Jared, next one is mine.”
Jared looked like he was ready to strangle Alana. Not that he didn’t care for her, but because he rarely had a say in things. She was sure he would have made her a tracking device eventually. But he was doing all the work, and he wanted to say who got what first. She had to feel a little sorry for him. That was probably her witchy human side thinking though. Her demon side reminded her that he was lower on the demon totem pole of power and that was the way things went down.
She smiled and said, “Thank you, Hunter.” And then with raised brows, she said to Jared, “Thanks.”
He still looked sulky.
“Be careful,” Celeste said. “The police might be there this time.”
Yeah. Alana hadn’t really thought of that, but she could just see them stationed around the morgue. Did they have an APB out on her? Would they arrest her on the spot?
Most likely.
Another notion made her skin chill in trepidation. What if the Matusa had the notion to go after the summoner’s personal effects, if he hadn’t already? What if he was there now?
With that awful thought in mind, she and Hunter made their way to the morgue. They found two men inside dressed in scrubs, no police officers, and best of all, no Matusa.
She quickly made the two men forget that Hunter and she shouldn’t be there.
“Where are the personal effects for the man who was snake bitten at the zoo?” Alana asked, wanting to get this over with in a hurry. The pungent smell of cleaning solutions and the undercurrent of the smell of death clung gruesomely to the white washed room. Plus, every second they stayed here exposed them to a possible encounter with the police or the summoner’s murder.
Both men just stared stupidly at her.
“He was brought in this morning. Snake bite marks. Male. Zoo.”
Both men nodded and one retrieved the man’s personal effects. Then Alana frowned, rethinking the whole scenario. “Why wouldn’t the police have kept these as evidence in their investigation of a murder?”
Neither said anything, as if they were confused by her question.
“Wouldn’t these be part of police evidence? Just like his clothes would be?”
“Are these…” Hunter read the name on the driver’s license, “Jessup Carter’s personal effects?”
Neither man responded. Alana asked the same question only this time, the one said, “No.”
“Who said these were the man’s personal effects?”
“His brother,” the one said.
The other pulled out the sign-out sheet and pointed to the name. “His brother,” he said.
Expecting to see the name Carter, Alana blinked. It said: His brother. “Let us see the dead man.”
The two men pulled back the sheet.
She stared at him. She hadn’t seen him in the snake room, but this wasn’t the same man pictured on the driver’s license.
“Who left these personal effects here, saying they were this man’s?” she asked.
“The police,” the shorter man said.
“It’s a trap,” Alana telepathically told Hunter. “They’re waiting to see who might come for the man’s things.” She focused on the men. “What is this man’s name?”
Hunter’s phone began ringing and the men looked startled. Al
ana hurriedly got their attention as Hunter said, “Thanks. We’re leaving now.” He grabbed Alana’s arm. “Scrub their thoughts or whatever it is you do. We’ve got to go.”
“His name?” Alana asked the men again, not budging from her speck of washed white tile floor.
“Al Cesierone.”
“Address?”
“Alana,” Hunter said, sharply, gently tugging at her.
She quickly made the men forget that she and Hunter had been there, then she rushed out of the morgue with Hunter. “What’s wrong?”
“Police are headed this way. Someone saw us and thought you looked like the girl in the news.”
“Great.”
They hurried out a back door that put them on the other side of the building a long ways from the parking lot where they’d entered before, which meant they were a lot farther from Celeste’s parked car now, too.
“South side of the building,” Hunter said to Jared over the phone. “Hurry.” Then he added, “Don’t run over anyone.”
He kept walking with Alana at a quickened pace, making her nearly run to keep up with his longer stride. He moved away from the hospital, and she knew Jared would direct Celeste toward the Matusa and Kubiteron demons on his laptop demon tracker.
Everything would have been fine. Celeste was in view of them and headed directly for them, when a police officer, shouted, “Alana Fainot! Stop right there!”
Chapter 7
Hunter had known it would be a risk to take Alana anywhere, but he’d thought it would be a reasonable risk if they could learn who the dead man was and where he had lived. They had to locate his portal opening device and destroy it.
Now they were faced with the possibility Alana could be arrested and him along with her. Getting out of that mess could be a real nightmare.
He and Alana turned to face what he hoped was just a hospital security officer. A lone security officer attempting to detain her until the cops arrived. If so, she could cast her witch’s mind control over him, no problem.
Two police officers were heading for them, and two more patrol cars were driving in their direction.
This was so not good.