When Darkness Falls

by Susan Krinard, Tanith Lee, Evelyn Vaughn

  "That's Rick Everitt," she said, remembering how the former varsity baseball player had sought her out last night. How he hadn't seemed to have changed much since high school. How his puppyish attentions made her feel uncomfortable.

  But it hadn't been a help-me-he's-dangerous uncomfortable. It had been more of a how-can-I-go-find-real-friends-without-hurting-this-guy's-feelings uncomfortable. He'd seemed more like a victim waiting to happen than a practitioner of the demonic arts!

  "What makes you think—?"

  But Tomas had already turned to another page. It was the Spanish club, and Liz Carpenter, as club president, stood proudly on one end.

  One row of students behind her stood Ricky Everitt, looking at her instead of the camera.

  Marcy had a hard time drawing her next breath. Even before Tomas showed her the third picture he'd found—Judith Barstow dancing in the hallway and Ricky Everitt watching from the partial cover of a locker door—she knew it was him.

  "I dated him once," she said, or tried to. Her voice sounded odd in her ears. "He was so… formal. I couldn't relax around him."

  "Maybe you couldn't relax around him because on some level you knew he was a nutcase?" challenged Tomas.

  "But he wasn't! He was a baseball player and a B student. Shy. Quiet. Never into trouble."

  "Isn't that what neighbors say about serial killers?"

  "And about shy, quiet people who are never in trouble."

  Tomas said, "I think we need to talk to someone a bit more observant."

  "Ricky Everitt?" repeated Sharona's voice over the speakerphone. "Was he the one who ate ketchup right out of the packet for lunch all the time?"

  "That was Rodney Pruitt," said Marcy. "Ricky was on the baseball team."

  She met Tomas's gaze through a long moment of Sharona making "Hmm" noises. Then her sister said, "Yes! I remember now. You dated this guy once, right? And I told you not to let him take you by any cemeteries."

  Tomas raised his eyebrows, his expression somewhere between curiosity and accusation.

  Marcy said, "You did not!"

  "I did so! Or I wanted to. The guy was creepy."

  Tomas spread his hands and mouthed, Creepy how?

  "Creepy how?"

  "He liked dissecting things in biology class. He loved old languages so much, they created a fourth-year, self-study Greek class just for him. He drew goats' heads on his notebooks. You know… creepy!"

  Marcy stared at the speakerphone, appalled. "And you let me go out with him?"

  "With a warning about cemeteries," Sharona reminded her. "You never wanted to hear anything bad about anybody. That's why I never told you how mad he was afterward."

  "Mad? About what?"

  There was a long silence on the phone. Then Sharona asked, "Why do you want to know?"

  Marcy thought fast. "Someone slipped a note under my windshield wiper at the reunion last night," she lied. "Some kind of love note… but I couldn't really read it. Just a few words. It's creepy."

  It wasn't a great story, but it didn't suck, either.

  "So Tomas is trying to figure out who to beat up?"

  Marcy's family certainly had been quick to believe the whole dating-Tomas story, hadn't they?

  As well as to believe that Tomas beat people up. He did give that impression.

  "You said Ricky was mad? At me?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "I went out with him!"

  "Yeah," agreed Sharona. "But you didn't kiss him good-night."

  "He didn't try to kiss me good-night," Marcy said while Tomas prepared to go beat up Richard Everitt.

  In this case, that meant looking up the man's number and street address in the phone book. Interesting, that a man who would take out revenge for his own frustrations on innocent women would be trusting enough to keep his number listed.

  "So, do you think he would live uptown, downtown or about ten miles from here?" Tomas asked, comparing Richard Everitts.

  "Ten miles from here. He mentioned last night that he was living in his parents' old house."

  Tomas circled the listing, then tore the page out of the book and stuffed it in his pocket. It wasn't as if he didn't get a new phone book what seemed like every month.

  "I remember that at the time, I almost hoped he would kiss me good-night," Marcy continued, following him to the coatrack by the front door. "It seemed like it was part of some mysterious series of requirements for a proper date, you know? But I thought the guy was supposed to initiate it, and he just said good-night, so I said good-night, and that was that. Afterward, he didn't talk to me in school anymore… which was kind of a relief, since it wasn't that great a date. But you'd think if he—Where are you going?"

  Tomas was shrugging into his leather jacket. He gave her a Duh look.

  She said, "Let me get my purse."

  "No."

  "No?"

  "You're staying here where it's safe." And he turned to leave.

  Marcy caught him by the waistband of his jeans and yanked him back. It was more the surprise that stopped him than her strength. "Excuse me?"

  "I'll take care of this."

  "I don't think so!"

  Great. Now she grew a backbone? "I already told you my abuela knows all about protecting against these kinds of people."

  "So maybe we should ask your abuela."

  Admitting that felt almost as embarrassing as her knowing he'd called in a priest. "I tried. She doesn't remember."

  "Then I'm the closest thing to a magic user that you have, aren't I?"

  Tomas barked out a laugh, reached behind him and tugged her hand free from his pants. Not something he would normally be doing, but these were extreme circumstances. "You call that spell you did last night magic?"

  "Besides," Marcy said, looking dangerous herself, "Rick isn't the one who wants me. He's trying to sacrifice me, remember? It's the demon who wants me."

  Tomas had grasped the doorknob, but now he hesitated, closing his eyes. Damn.

  "It's my apartment," she insisted. "It's my responsibility."

  She was right.

  So he turned around in defeat. "You'll need to change into pants, and wear a jacket. We're taking my motorcycle."

  Rick Everitt lived on a quiet old suburban street with tall shade trees and walk-up mailboxes on the front doors. It didn't look like the kind of place where someone would summon demons.

  Then again, if he'd started this ball rolling in high school, it was probably where he'd begun his career, alone in his bedroom. Why not continue?

  When Tomas thought about what else the boy might've been doing in his bedroom, concerning Marcy Bridges, he figured beating a retraction out of him would be a pleasure. He parked the bike against the opposite curb, dropped the kickstand and killed the engine.

  Then he had to unwind Marcy's arms from around his waist. Speaking of pleasures…

  "Now will you wait here?" he pleaded. "There aren't even any doors out here. You know that thing only seems to appear when doors are opened."

  "Actually, no," she said, clambering off the bike and ducking her head out of his spare helmet. "I don't know that. That's your theory. And this is my problem."

  Tomas hung both helmets on the handlebars before facing her, trying to look his most dangerous. And he really could be dangerous. She was about to see that. "You are not going after this guy alone."

  Something odd caught in Marcy's gaze at that. Something almost… sad? But all she said was, "I didn't say I could do this alone. I said I'm coming with you."

  He guessed that was as good as he would get.

  She wished she could handle this alone.

  As they took the front walk to the screened front door and rang the bell, Marcy felt increasingly useless. Tomas had been doing pretty much everything so far. He'd found the priest. He'd talked to his grandmother. He'd fought the demon more than once. He'd protected her, and he'd endangered himself, and he'd tolerated her family pretty well instead of telling them that he'd never had any
interest in her. He'd also come up with almost every really good idea of magical common sense—or maybe uncommon sense—that they'd used.

  And she, who'd spent the last half year of her life reading about magic in the desperate hopes of finding some kernels of personal power, had done little more than computer research. Now that they knew just about everything they had to know, and the moment of confrontation was at hand, she still needed Tomas to finish this.

  But at least she could be here for it.

  Then, when Rick answered the door, she wondered if maybe she could take him after all.

  Rick Everitt was as skinny as he'd been in high school, but while teenage boys towering to their full height had reason for that awkward, lanky look, a man of almost thirty just seemed… frail. He wore his hair the way he had in high school, too, short on the sides and long on the top, and even had on jeans and a Go Lumberjacks! T-shirt.

  He was wearing his class ring from high school, too. Last night, Marcy had assumed that was because of the reunion.

  "May I help you?" he asked, his gaze focusing worriedly on Tomas—until he noticed Marcy beside him. "Wait, I know you. Marcy from high school, right? Marcy… Bridges?"

  He grinned, delighted to see her, and Marcy's stomach sank. What if they were wrong? What if Tomas beat up the wrong guy?

  "Hi, Ricky," she said, shouldering herself between the poor, lost guy and her taut maintenance man. "I mean, Rick."

  "I still go by Ricky," he assured her. Well… that kind of went with the T-shirt, didn't it?

  "This is going to sound odd," she warned him, "but some strange things have happened since the reunion last night, and I was wondering if you knew anybody in our class who might have—"

  Her shoulder hit the doorjamb as Tomas pushed by her and into the foyer, grabbing the collar of Rick's shirt. "What the hell did you sic on her, you son of a bitch?"

  Rick's eyes widened. "What?"

  Marcy scrambled in after them, hoping nobody called the police. This would be very hard to explain to authorities. "Tomas, wait!"

  Tomas kept going, Ricky scrambling backward before his personal power. "You were frustrated about her not kissing you after your little date, right? When you didn't have the cojones to make the first move. God knows how many women you blamed for your own pitiful desperation, but this one isn't going to feed your pet evil, got it?"

  They stopped only when Ricky thudded against the back wall. "I don't know what you're talking about!"

  His voice came out strangled. That was probably because of Tomas's hold on his collar strangling him.

  Marcy grabbed Tomas's wrist and pulled. With both hands. No reaction, not even when she put her whole weight into it.

  Wow, he was strong.

  "We need to make sure it's really him," she insisted.

  "It's really him," Tomas growled.

  "I'm not going to let you hurt an innocent," she warned him.

  The look Tomas sent her was almost mocking. He was the big, tough Latino, after all, with his tattoo and his long braid, and she was just Marcy. "How exactly do you plan on—ow!"

  She'd just stomped, hard, on his booted instep. While he bent over from that, she jabbed her elbow at his nose. With a guttural grunt, he spun away from her, hands to his face.

  She stared, stunned that she'd even remembered those moves from an old college self-defense class. She'd never once tried them. She'd never thought she would have the, well, cojones.

  It felt kind of good.

  Ricky Everitt made a whimpering noise—and bolted through a side door, to safety. And probably to call the cops.

  Tomas was still slightly hunched, both hands to his nose, but he was facing her again. "Bud de hell buz dad?"

  That seemed to mean, What the hell was that? The question would match the fury blazing from his tiger eyes.

  "What if it wasn't him?" she demanded. "How could it be? Did you see him? He was just a… "

  "A bimp?"

  "I wouldn't have put it that way, but yes."

  "Bud udder kind of person bould deed to combensade by subbonding debons?"

  "What other kind of person would need to compensate by summoning demons?"

  Tomas, gingerly testing his nose with his fingers, just glared at her.

  "Wait a minute! I've been studying some magic, too—"

  He rolled his eyes.

  "I have so. And maybe it wasn't to compensate for anything. Maybe it was because it… it called to me."

  Something tickled at her awareness, subtle but significant.

  "Maybe because it felt right," she continued.

  It was a smell.

  "Maybe because—" Then she paused, and sniffed. Oh no.

  Tomas frowned at her and managed to ask, "Whad?" with only a little congestion.

  "Do you smell that?"

  "Marcy, I don'd shell eddy—" He tried again, more slowly. "Anything."

  She turned and looked at the door Ricky Everitt had escaped through. Oh no. She'd been wrong.

  "Brimstone."

  Tomas forgot about Marcy clocking him in the face and tried the door. Locked.

  Well, he damn well knew doors. This one was wood, at least forty years old and poorly set in its frame.

  It took him one solid kick on the jamb to crash through.

  He took longer to grasp what he saw on the other side.

  The room had once been a sunken living room/den with dark paneling, probably the height of fashion when the house was built, complete with a wet bar for entertaining. Ricky had kept the avocado shag carpet, the panels, the wet bar. He'd kept the glass case of small trophies and ribbons, the display rack of old baseball bats.

  But he'd painted a circle on the shaggy floor with weird, occult symbols along its border, like something out of a B-level horror movie. He'd turned the wet bar into some kind of altar, complete with skull and candles and a huge, heavy-looking book. And he'd hung grotesque banners on each of the dark walls, strange pictures painted in Tomas-didn't-want-to-know-what.

  All except the wall behind the altar. That one was decorated with a spread of photographs of teenage girls, including many of the ones Tomas had been looking at in Marcy's yearbooks. Several pictures looked more modern—probably from the class reunion.

  The son of a bitch!

  "I know what you're thinking," said Ricky Everitt, circling warily behind the bar. "You're wondering why I—"

  But Tomas vaulted across his Formica altar and slammed the bastard into his wishing wall before the man could even finish.

  Ricky made a terrified, squeaking noise.

  "You think I care?" demanded Tomas, using his full weight to keep this self-styled Satanist pinned against the paneling, breathing into his face. He was careful to enunciate past his hurt nose. "You think I give a damn what miserable part of your little loser life made you think you had the right to hurt innocent women?"

  "But they weren't innocent," protested Ricky, trying to duck. He didn't stand a chance of movement. "That's why we had to keep going. We—"

  Tomas dug his fingers into the wimp's scrawny shoulder, shaking him again so the back of his head thumped against the paneling. He narrowed his eyes, lowered his voice to an even more dangerous growl and let an edge of his parents' accent roll through the words. "Why are you still talking?"

  Ricky pressed his lips tightly together—and Marcy, behind Tomas, said, "I want to know."

  Tomas rolled his eyes, unable to contain a sigh. But at least she'd stopped fighting him to protect this waste of breath. "What I want to know," he said, "is how soon Ricky here can call his pet monster off."

  Ricky said, "I can't."

  Tomas shook him again. "Wrong. Answer."

  Marcy asked, "What do you mean, you had to keep going?"

  Ricky slid his fearful gaze to Tomas, who reluctantly nodded. "Make it fast."

  "Daiesthai only needed one virgin, just one, as payment, so it seemed weird that I had to provide a whole list of names and pictures and hair clippi
ngs—"

  Both Tomas and Marcy repeated, "Hair clippings?"

  "Or lollipop sticks or chewed gum or used Kleenex—anything with their DNA on it. I never thought it would get as far as any of the others, like Marcy, but who knew Jenny Black was such a slut?"

  Tomas blinked at him. "Jenny Black?"

  "She died at a party in our junior year." To judge from Marcy's hushed voice, she knew exactly who he meant. "The rumor was she was doing drugs and caught herself on fire… "

  "Four? You killed four women?" Not, Tomas realized, that they could ever prove it in court.

  He decided to worry about that once they solved Marcy's problem—at no matter what cost to Ricky.

  "Then it turned out we had to wait over two years before Daiesthai could try again," continued Ricky, voice uneven. "There's always a catch, isn't there? That, and the fresh DNA sample, and the stupid chanting… "

  As if he was griping about a bad lease contract on a car!

  Marcy said, "And after two years?"

  "Liz was away at Columbia, and I guess she wasn't a virgin anymore, either. Then Judy. Hell, by the time we got to Cassie, she'd been married and divorced!"

  "So you killed them," said Tomas.

  "No! Daiesthai killed them! I just, sort of… pointed them out."

  "But why?" demanded Marcy. "What do you get out of all this?"

  Ricky actually smiled. Tomas was close enough to tear the man's nose off with his teeth, and of a mood to do it, and the bastard smiled a wishful, faraway smile like someone contemplating an old love. "Whatever I want," he said, savoring the words. "Anything. Wealth. Power. Women. Can you imagine? I couldn't believe it when I managed to translate the incantation, doing my research paper on ancient languages. I mean, who wouldn't risk a few lives in order to have whatever they want?"

  Tomas looked at Marcy. "I'm going to kill him now."

  Ricky said, "Not if you want your cat back."

  Crap. Tomas saw the change in Marcy at the very possibility of it. "Snowball?" she echoed. "Where?"

  Ricky said, "Or the priest." Like a footnote.

  "Don't do it," warned Tomas, knowing the futility of it even as he spoke. Hell, in her place, wouldn't he do the same?