He glanced up. “How do you think we should kill it? I mean, what will work? Iron? Silver? Holy oil or water?”
After a moment’s consideration, I remembered Lily’s duffle. I placed it on Remi’s bed, unzipped it. We both looked into an array of cardboard boxes containing bullets and shells, flasks, small bags of various herbs, a few bottles of God knows what. Also two of the twisted, silver-wrapped wooden stakes.
“It’s not a vampire,” I noted, “so we probably don’t need to bring the stakes.”
Remi’s tone was subdued. “I’m not lookin’ forward to the day we have to rely on those stakes. That’s close work. Too close.”
The black dog had been close enough to take down every member of the family. It could well try the same thing with us.
“We’ll take a shotgun,” I said, “but your rifle may be the best bet. I think it’s advisable to keep our distance from this thing. You can play sniper. Or hunter. Whichever works for you.”
McCue didn’t buy it. “You’re the one with the extra special, fancy-dancy gun skills.”
“You’re the one with the skills for that gun,” I pointed out. “Later, I’ll take the chance to learn its weight, its kick, check out the sights, the lever action. But not tonight.”
Remi eventually agreed, then suggested we mount up. I shot him side-eye, grabbed a box of silver bullets and a second of iron buckshot shells. I opened it, considered the ammo, then blew a breath all over bullets and cartridges. It still felt ridiculous, but I wasn’t going to argue.
“I imagine they were already dipped in holy oil,” McCue remarked dryly.
“Let’s just be on the safe side. Bless it with spit, you know?” Sexy image.
I handed him the box, and he followed my example as if he were blowing out birthday candles, then nodded. “Let’s head ’em up, move ’em out.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, I am not a cow.”
“In all that leather you might as well be.”
* * *
—
By the time we arrived at Wupatki, sunset was upon us. The witching hour, so to speak, but heralding instead the incipient arrival of a black dog, a barghest, a black shuck and all the other names.
I pulled off helmet and gloves, left them on my bike. McCue was taking down a shotgun and the Winchester from his gun rack. He handed me the shotgun. I broke it open, saw it was loaded with what we needed. I tucked more shells into my jacket pockets.
Remi’s hunting rifle wasn’t prepped for killing demons; he took the time to eject the old rounds from the repeater, replaced them with breath-blessed silver.
Abruptly, in my bones, in my consciousness, I sensed it again.
Evil.
Malevolence.
But tenuous. Coy. Ephemeral.
Domicile.
I settled the shotgun in my hands and against my right shoulder, turned in a circle, twitched shoulders against a chill. “You getting anything on the demon?”
McCue paused, and his eyes went distant. After a moment he shook his head. “I got nada. I don’t understand how come your heavenly engine is running while mine isn’t.”
“Half running,” I said. “It’s still—intermittent. But as to why, maybe it’s an alpha thing. And maybe in five minutes you’ll know exactly where the demon is and what it’s doing.”
The moon was rising as we walked the path toward the ruins. My chest felt constricted, breath ran short. We’d killed two ghosts, exorcised a demon, but all had been wearing human form. This was a dog, and black dogs could indeed pull down humans from the heights, even those of us with sparkling little celestial beacons.
When McCue, in his drawl, said that he was fixin’ to break off from me and circle the ruins from one direction, suggesting I go the other, I declared that idea horror-movie stupid. “If we do that, and I was watching this at home, I’d be yelling at the screen about how stupid we are. We stay together.”
“And give the surrogate a tight-grouped target? Once we get in there and spread out, at least one of us’ll get ’im.”
Well, he had a point. “I really, really wish you could sense where it is.”
He shot me an annoyed glance. “So do I, but I can’t. Yet. So let’s do this thing. If the surrogate’s not inside the building, I’ll find a spot to set up with the rifle. If that sucker is inside, we corner it and take it out.”
We walked up the trail leading to the ruins. We did not rush. We made our steps quiet.
Remi watched the left, I the right. Both of us employed a sweeping visual assessment, checked the immediate environment, then one of us swung around and walked carefully backward to check our rear while the one in front kept moving.
Shitshitshit. I wanted not to be here.
Beside me, Remi said, “I wonder where the kids were when the parents got taken. Or if the kids were killed first.”
And that eased me, in kind of a sick way, because I had a purpose. It smoothed down the hair on the back of my neck, settled my belly. I blew out a breath and let go of the tension. I knew we needed badly to save other children. And we could.
Kids. Parents. Kids. Boy and girl, maybe seven, maybe eight. Or both at once, possibly twins.
Adrenaline ratcheted up. I wanted this done. Over. And it was enough to fuel me. As we reached the big multi-roomed building, Remi said he was going left to circle around, and I should go right. The plan was to meet after checking out the perimeter, then go together inside the ruins to investigate individual rooms.
The moon remained on the rise, not yet at its zenith, but already it illuminated my surroundings. Lily had been right; tracking a surrogate in a black dog’s clothing required good light.
I was halfway around the perimeter when the beast showed. Beneath the moon, not shunning its light, the thing paced slowly forward. Its head was lowered as it scented track, the tail up and rigid.
It was sleek, and slick, and oily beneath the moon, as if colors could not stick. Thanks to the lunar illumination I could see it clearly: angles, muscles, curves, a startling definition even against encroaching darkness.
I like dogs. Dogs like me. But this . . . oh, hell. This wasn’t a dog. It was the End of Days. The end of my life. The thing was Mastiff. Great Dane. It was pit bull and Rottweiler with Doberman thrown in. It was huge, and the sheen of its coat, beneath the full moon, the delineation of its muscles strung tight yet rippling, promised a strangely beautiful, economical killing machine. An almost elegant death even in the midst of horror.
If, that is, one didn’t mind having a throat ripped out and the vertebrae, like knuckle bones, like gristle, chewed to powder.
It stilled. Lifted its head, air-scented, looked directly at me and lowered its head in a hackled, stiff-tailed threat display. Teeth glinted, but that’s not what I was struck by.
White. White eyes. Not the red of legend.
The pupils ceased their roundness and bled into vertical slits. Cat eyes in a dog’s body.
Well, hell.
Here it was, and here I was, and my throat was there for the taking.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Only a fool stands in front of his ending and does nothing about it. I might still die, but I’d go out with a bang. Literally.
Even as I brought the shotgun up to the hollow of my shoulder, I heard a rifle report. The black dog staggered, cried out, dropped briefly, then surged back to its feet. It drew its lips back in a ferocious snarl.
Well, Remi might could be a better shot.
The black dog leaped, and I took off running.
I dumped the shotgun; it encumbered me too much as I ran, banging against my hip as I clutched it in one hand. Dogs, as far as I knew, even with a demon aboard, lacked the capacity—and the opposable thumbs—to gather up a gun and fire it.
Please God, let Remi’s shot, even if not center mass or buried in
the brain, slow the sucker down.
The ground was a conglomeration of grass, grit, dirt clods, stone rearing out of the soil. My knees and ankles took the brunt as I scrambled to remain upright, worked to keep my footing. The moon bathed the earth, but behind me I heard the dog.
No. The surrogate.
The chant gained volume in my head. Remi Remi Remi.
Breath, all tangled amidst need and fear and effort, came up from lungs into the air. I sucked oxygen, hearing the scrape of it against my throat.
There, before me . . . the ball court wall, crouching in moon and shadow. It would hardly stop the beast, but it nonetheless offered an opportunity.
“Remi!”
I thrust weight upward, leaped, felt my boots hit stone, then crouched and planted a hand at the end of a stiffened arm, propelled myself outward and down. I most assuredly did not want to hit the circular bench built low.
It was horror-movie stupid. The ball court featured only two narrow entrance/exits. The walls surrounding the court were not insurmountable, but definitely a challenge to someone badly winded and running for his life. But I believed it might give Remi another chance.
I hit ground, went down, tucked and rolled, came up to my feet just as the beast leaped onto the wall. The moon painted its body, turned it a tarnished, silvered gray, slick sheen against the darkness.
Just as I pulled my Taurus from its holster, Remi’s rifle shot took out the surrogate.
I stood there with lungs heaving. I wanted to swear, but I lacked the breath.
The black dog, struck through the heart, had tumbled down the wall, bounced off the bench-like structure, and landed in a heap on the ground. Blood spilled out of its mouth, attenuated, stopped. The heart was no longer pumping.
I bent over, planted hands against my knees, though one still clung to the gun. I felt my hair fall forward to obscure both sides of my face. After a moment, breathing better, I sat down all of a sudden with no grace at all. I was still not acclimated to the elevation.
“Gabe?” came the call.
I wanted to answer. Nothing in me could.
Remi jumped up onto the wall with its wide, flat rim and stared down at me. The rifle hung from his hands. “You okay?”
I waved at him, trying to communicate my okayness through the gesture, then kind of folded up, tipped, lay flat on my back against the ground.
Holy shit. Holy Christ.
I didn’t feel anything like a scrap of heaven’s grace, neither essence nor spark. I was just a man, no more. But Remi and I had killed a demon.
McCue came into the ball court opening, walked over to me. He didn’t squat, didn’t kneel, didn’t even bend down. Just stood over me with a rifle in his hands.
Then, waxing poetic, he said, “You scrambled like a chicken tryin’ to outrun a fox.”
I presented him with an eloquent middle finger.
After a moment, as my arm flopped back to the earth, he asked if I would live. I said yes, levered myself into a sitting position, then with the help of a stiffened left arm, I thrust myself up from the ground and onto my feet.
Said I, as I recovered my breath, “Couldn’t you have taken him out before I scrambled like a chicken trying to outrun the fox?”
“Hell, son, where’s the fun in that?” He grinned, and added, “Betas rule.”
I was sore from my tuck and roll. Apparently I’d come down hard on my left shoulder before doing an imitation of a hedgehog rolling itself up against a threat.
I looked at the sprawled dog again. Definitely dead. And since a black dog wasn’t truly real, there was no host to save.
“You know,” I began thoughtfully, “this is really, really weird.”
Remi’s eyes went wide. “Wait—wait. Gabe—”
He was supposed to get a sense of demonic presence and seemed clearly alarmed, so when a woman appeared atop the wall I didn’t even think about it. On edge, jittery, trembling from an adrenaline high, I shot her five times.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
She didn’t go down. What she did, with markedly angry eyes, was unfold a pair of huge, black, shimmering wings, then snap them forward to meet and emit a thunderclap of sound so powerful that it sent Remi and I both to the ground from the force of it.
She put up a fist with the forefinger extended and stabbed at the air. “Don’t piss me off!”
Remi brought his rifle up, though he was seated on the ground.
I reached out and caught the barrel. “No. No, that’s Greg.”
She glared at me. “I am Grigori; my name is not Greg.”
“Who?” Remi asked, and then he got it. “Oh, the angel from the Zoo Club? The one who told you angels have differing agendas and humans might end up as collateral damage?”
We were still sitting in dirt. “That’s the one. She says she’s not one of them, but at this point who knows?” I rose, brushed dust from my pants, tucked my revolver back in its holster and extended a hand down to McCue. He grasped it, and I pulled him up.
Black eyes glittered as she stared at us. The moonlight was kind to the bone structure of her face, with its high, delicate cheekbones and wide mouth, though it was set very grimly at the moment.
“How did you not die from that?” Remi asked. “Heart high through the center of your chest.”
“Apparently they don’t,” I murmured. “Die, that is.” I reconsidered. “Then again, maybe they do; she wouldn’t tell me how it might happen the last time we met.” I looked up at her. “You know, those wings are awesome. Grandaddy never really did show us his, just kind of a rippling, an impression, and displaced air.”
The wings were outstretched. Dressed in black and standing atop the wall with those things unfurled, she resembled a . . . well . . . yeah: an avenging angel, Asian style. Then she furled the wings back almost like an accordion. They dimmed into the darkness beneath the moon, then disappeared altogether.
She gazed down on us both. “Grigori watch. Grigori record. Grigori keep track of what others are doing, most particularly when they are infants, as we reckon age.” Now she glared. “My name is not Greg, or Gregory, and I’ll ask you to stop using them. My name is Ambriel.”
I gestured, indicated the black dog, hoped to mollify her. “We took out a surrogate.”
“I saw.” Her black hair was glossy in the moonlight. “I was watching; that’s my job. But yours isn’t finished.”
Remi asked, “Are we to bury it? Burn it? What do you want us to do with it?”
“You are to clear the domicile. The demon will go with it.”
“Uhh,” I said. “They haven’t taught us that yet.”
She didn’t look any happier. “Can you not sort it out on your own?”
“Remi knows Latin,” I pointed out. “Will that help? If there’s a ritual, I mean.”
“Latin will do,” she said in bad humor. “So, Remi, what do you think you should say to clear the domicile?”
He gazed up at her, ruminating on word choices. I could see it in him. Finally he offered: “Out, damned spot.”
Greg—Ambriel—looked no happier. “This isn’t Macbeth, idiot boy.”
Remi looked thoughtful. “Would a rite of exorcism work?”
“It’s already dead,” she pointed out. “But we can’t very well leave the body out here for tourists or Park Rangers to find, so we must get rid of it as well as its lingering influence. Erase it from this place. That’s clearing the domicile.”
I looked at the very dead black dog, empty now of demon. “Why is it still here?” I asked. “Black dogs aren’t real. Without the surrogate animating it, shouldn’t it just disappear?”
“The demon made it real,” she explained. “Therefore it is.”
I looked at Remi. He looked at me. We both turned to Ambriel. I said, “We haven’t got a clue.”
She
was annoyed, sent both of us a sweeping glance of sheer disgust. “You should be able to figure it out.”
“Okay.” I looked again at the very dead dog, gave it a command. “Scram.”
Naturally ‘scram’ was not the magic word, any more than Lady Macbeth and her damned spot was. Ambriel finally seemed to understand that we really, truly didn’t even know where to start.
“Watch and learn,” she commanded. Dutifully, Remi and I did just that.
She remained atop the encircling wall. Though her elbows were bent, she lifted and extended her forearms, bent her wrists upward, displayed the palms of her hands. She resembled nothing so much as a fugitive surrendering, hands in the air.
Then commenced the Latin: “Patri bonorum omnium creatorem omnium sanctorum deponentes pestilentibus locis visum vocemque bestias inferni.”
I expected bolts of light, or laser beams, or smoke, or something, anything visible, shooting from her hands. Something dramatic.
Nada. Nothing at all came from her hands.
And then the black dog’s body exploded.
It was literally blasted apart. Portions of the body were flung up into the air and across the ball court. Remi and I both ducked, hunching shoulders and protecting our eyes from flying blood, bone, and viscera.
All of the scraps, pieces, and traces of the exploded body were immolated. Fires burned here and there, illuminating the ball court rather like lighting up a baseball stadium. Each pocket of flame consumed the black dog’s scattered remains.
When the body was gone, when at last it was truly gone, I caught that overwhelming smell of sickly demon deodorant. Remi and I both coughed hard enough that I thought I was going to puke. But I swallowed my belly back into its cavity.
“Oh,” McCue said in a hoarse voice. “Yeah, I can recite that. I just don’t know how to explode the thing without C-4.”
She stood with hands on hips, looming over us. “You need to learn it. I suggest you do that very soon. Because so far there have been angels to clear the domiciles, but that won’t last. You’re being given a little latitude right now because you are infants, but next time—and there will be a next time—you will have to do this yourself.”
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