by Brian Harmon
Eric longingly recalled how the previous agents had merely tried to kill him. Such simpler times. Those were the days.
It took all his willpower to remain cool. “Like I said, I’d have to think about it.”
She let go of his hand and took a step back. The smile was gone now. She crossed her arms in front of her again. Another button was undone. Those big breasts were pretty much out now. Only the bra contained them. “What’s to think about? I’m offering you the world.”
“Then explain it to me. What kind of world are you offering me?”
She stared at him for a moment, as if trying to make sense of him. Then that smile crept back again. “Okay then,” she said. “Imagine a world where you can have anything you want—do anything you want—and nobody can do anything about it. You can live your darkest fantasies. You can destroy anyone who’s ever crossed you. You can have anyone you’ve ever desired.”
“And you can give me that?”
“And more. The secrets of the universe are yours to discover. Do you have any idea what’s really out there? Do you know how little most people know about the true nature of the world?”
Eric had an idea, but he wasn’t going to let her know that.
“You’re a prisoner in this life, whether you know it or not. Don’t you want to be free?”
“Are you free?”
This took her by surprise. “Me? Of course I’m free. I’m a goddess. No one can touch me.”
“Can your bosses touch you?”
Her smile vanished again. “Not for much longer. Not after I’m finished in this town. After that, they won’t be able to touch me.” There was a fire in her eyes now. It was hard to tell if it was loathing or power lust or both, but he didn’t think he’d want to be one of the people she was thinking about right now. “They’ll worship me when I’m done here. And I’ll have their skins on my palace wall.”
Eric wasn’t sure what to say now. He seemed to have touched a nerve.
But she recomposed herself impressively fast. Her eyes softened. Her smile returned. She looked at him again, studying the curves of his face. “Have you ever killed someone?” she asked.
“What? No. Never.”
That smile widened. A strange sort of glee filled her eyes. “You’re lying. I can tell. You’ve taken a life. With your own hands, no less. I can always tell.”
Eric bit his lip. He’d killed a lot of monsters. That didn’t bother him. And he’d stood back and let a number of very bad people die. That bothered him a little. But it had to be done. And he accepted that burden. But she was right. There was one person he’d killed with his own hands. He hadn’t wanted to, but he was left no choice. It happened so fast. It was practically a reflex. He was defending himself.
But this woman had it all wrong. Her eyes shimmering with perverse delight, she said, “You know the thrill. Did it make you feel powerful? Did it excite you?”
It kept him up at night was what it did. Aching inside, eating away at him.
She pressed against him again and licked her red lips. There was a strange sort of lust in her eyes. She was breathing hard, almost panting. “Was it a woman? It was, wasn’t it?”
He stared at her, barely able to comprehend the awful turn this conversation had taken. It was actually turning her on!
“I’ll bet your heart was racing when you did it. I’ll bet you were like an animal. Wild. Passionate. Uncontrollable.”
She touched his lips with her fingertips. With her other hand, she undid the last button on her blouse and then grasped one of her lace-clad breasts, squeezing it. “Did you make her scream?” she panted. “Did you make her beg? Did you violate her?”
Dear God…
“I can give you that all the time. And anything else you want. And all you have to do is give yourself to me.” She leaned closer. Her lips brushed his and she whispered, “Be my lover. I’ll be your toy.”
And then she was kissing him. Like the disturbing monologue that led up to it, there was nothing pleasant about it. Her lips attacked him, seizing his mouth and sucking at him like some vile creature of the deep. He felt her hot tongue slither between his teeth, forcing its way inside him.
He tried to pull away, but he was still up against the wall. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to go. Instinctively, he knew that pushing her away was the wrong thing to do. She was wound up on fantasies of murder and rape. If he did anything to shut her down too fast, she might jump from freaky to homicidal and act out a different kind of fantasy. So he balled up his fists at his sides and waited for the ordeal to be over.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, she pulled away and stared at him. Her red lipstick was smeared. Her eyes were intense. She was still breathing hard. “Wow,” she said. “I’ve never met a man so restrained. Your power is even more incredible than I imagined.”
His “power?” He could think of worse powers to have than the ability to resist a freaky psycho chick’s filthy sexual advances. He wanted badly to wipe his mouth. He wanted to spit. He wanted to tell her she was one crazy bitch. But this was about more than just her. This was about Hector. This was about Creek Bend. This was about his family and friends. He needed to keep his cool. He forced himself to keep a straight face and said, “What can I say? I prefer a more dominant role when I’m with a woman.”
It was a lie, of course. A vile one. He wanted nothing to do with dominating this woman, or any woman. (And saying something like that to Karen would be the equivalent of taking a permanent and well-deserved vow of celibacy.) But he sensed that it was just the sort of thing this woman wanted to hear, and he was right. Her eyes lit up at this. She let out a soft squeal and pressed herself against him again. “Yes, Sir,” she purred. “Does this mean you accept my job offer?”
“I still want to think about it.”
She took a step back, surprised. He saw that one of her breasts had come out of her bra and was completely exposed to him. It should’ve been extremely sexy, but this woman made his skin crawl. “What?” she demanded.
“It’s a policy of mine,” he explained. “I never make a life-changing decision without sleeping on it.”
She stood there in front of him, staring at him, not bothering to put her breast away. She looked cross now.
“Even an offer I can’t possibly turn down,” he added.
She continued to stare at him for a moment, as if sizing him up. Then, finally, she smiled that smug smile again. “Okay. Tomorrow then.”
“Tomorrow,” agreed Eric.
“And will you give me your power tomorrow, too?”
It took all his will to keep a straight face as he replied, “If you give me yours.”
She bit her lip again. “Every last drop,” she promised.
“Tomorrow then.”
“If that’s the way you want it. I suppose I’ll just have to wait.” She checked her watch. “I have some business to attend to at the school anyway.”
The school? Didn’t Holly say she saw the high school in one of her spell visions?
“I’ll meet you here again tomorrow morning.”
He cocked his head. “You want me to meet you here again?”
She straightened her skirt and turned away, still not bothering to cover her exposed breast, as if she meant for him to see it until she was gone. “I’ll meet you here, specifically.” She crossed the room and started up the stairs. Halfway up, she said, “I’ll be locking you in, of course.”
“Wait. What?”
“Nothing personal. Just policy. I have important work to do. Until you join the team, I can’t have you wandering around freely.”
He ran after her, but he was too late. The woman reached the top of the stairs and shut the basement door before he could stop her.
He was trapped.
Again.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Eric stood on the stairs, listening to the sound of the woman’s heels as she walked away. When he heard the front door close, he hurried back down
to the basement and threw open the wardrobe.
Holly was standing there, her eyes wide, her cheeks flushed bright red, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. She looked furious. “Oh. My. God!”
Eric stared back at her, stunned. “Um…” He wasn’t sure what to say. It wasn’t what it looked like? He could explain?
“That fucking bitch!”
He decided to run with that: “I know!”
He’d assumed she was watching them through the crack between the doors in the wardrobe, much as Hector must’ve watched the agents when they were torturing the poor woman in 1962. But how much had she missed? He tried to imagine what her view of his exchange with the freaky woman was. How much could she not see? How much could she not hear?
Surely it hadn’t seemed to her as if he’d enjoyed that.
Right?
“The nerve of her! I swear to God, when she kissed you I was this close to opening these doors and blasting that slut straight to hell!”
Eric was really glad she didn’t. Then they wouldn’t know that the agents were up to something at the high school. (And also, he was pretty sure that Holly’s thrust spell would’ve blasted both the woman and him to hell, given that she was standing directly between him and her.) But he didn’t say so. Instead, he said, “That was awful. Disgusting.”
She growled and stomped her foot. “Bitch! I can’t believe she’d do that to Karen!”
Karen. That was going to be an awful conversation. If she was still mad about that strip club nonsense, he was probably going to be in the doghouse forever over this. His stomach clenched at the very idea of her hearing that this woman had actually kissed him. And it wasn’t even his fault. He was the real victim. That woman seriously made his skin crawl.
He pulled his cell phone and the charger out of his pocket. “Any idea what the hell that was all about?”
THAT WOMAN WAS DEFINITELY AN AGENT. SHE HAD THE SAME FEEL AS THE OTHERS
Between that and all that talk about her “company,” he was confident she was right.
ALSO, SHE TOTALLY JUST GOT OFF THE TRAIN FROM PSYCHO TOWN
Eric nodded. That woman was nightmare fuel.
Sensing someone reading over his shoulder, he looked up.
It was the ghost woman, with her bloody eyes. She was standing right next to him.
He gave a startled yelp and jumped back a few steps.
She stared at him as if he were acting silly.
“Sorry,” he told her. “Startled me.”
She cocked her head to one side, as if pondering how she could possibly have been so frightening to him.
Holly cursed again. It wasn’t a very ladylike curse. It was quite vulgar.
Both Eric and the ghostly woman looked at her, surprised.
“Okay…” he said. “Let’s just focus on finding a way out of here. She locked us in.”
“Oh she thinks she did,” growled Holly. She stormed up the stairs and stopped in front of the door. Then she thrust her hands forward, as if she intended to shove the door out of her way. Instantly, it was obliterated in a flurry of flying splinters. The impact was enough to shake the entire bungalow. Dust rained down from the floor joists overhead and things crashed to the floor upstairs. It sounded as if pictures were knocked off the walls and dishes were spilled from the cupboards. “Come on!”
Eric started to follow her, but an icy hand gripped his elbow. He turned and found himself looking into the bloody eyes of the ghost woman. Her mouth moved, and he heard her voice, but those two things didn’t seem to go together. The words rang out inside his head and seemed to speed up and slow down, like a broken tape player, so that they didn’t match the movement of her lips and sounded like they were broadcasting straight from hell.
“When you see the broken girl dancing in the snow, follow the bones and you will find her.”
Then she was gone, as if she’d never been there at all. The only thing left was the cold place on his arm where she’d grabbed him.
Broken girl? Bones? What the hell was all that supposed to mean? Why were ghosts always saying random shit to him?
Feeling oddly rattled, he turned and started up the stairs after Holly. But as soon as he began to climb, he was startled by the woman again. She was lurking under the stairs, staring back at him through the space between the steps.
“She’s waiting,” she told him.
“Who’s waiting?” he asked.
But again, she was gone.
He lingered for a moment longer, wondering if the creepy ghost lady had anything else to say to him, then hurried up to the first floor of the bungalow.
Holly’s thrust had not only obliterated the door, he saw, but chopped a table in half and cracked the countertop. He’d seen thrusts magnified under a magical barrier, but he had no idea it could be so powerful on its own.
Had she become stronger since the battle at the farmhouse? Or had her anger intensified the blast?
Holly was already on the porch. He hurried to catch up with her. “Hey, wait for me.”
She didn’t respond. She was standing at the top of the porch steps, looking out toward the driveway. There were no cars to be seen. Mistress Janet was gone.
He stopped in the doorway and watched her for a moment. Her fists were still clenched at her sides. “Are you okay?”
“No. I’m not.”
He wasn’t sure what to say to that.
“We need to get back to our cars.” She took off toward the driveway without waiting for a response.
He followed after her but made no effort to catch up. He fell behind and pulled out his cell phone again. Is she mad at me? he thought.
PROBABLY. YOU WERE JUST MAKING OUT WITH THE ENEMY
“I was not—” he blurted, then stifled himself and whispered into the phone. “I was not making out with that maniac! She was attacking me!”
WHATEVER, PERV
Are you kidding me right now? he thought. You’re inside my head. You know how awful that was. You were there!
SETTLE DOWN. I KNOW. I’M JUST GIVING YOU A HARD TIME
“It’s not funny,” he grumbled. “That was an awful experience.”
OF COURSE IT WAS
He nodded.
I’LL VOUCH FOR YOU
“Thanks.”
I WON’T EVEN TELL ANYONE SHE GAVE YOU A BONER
“I did not have a—” Again, he had to stifle himself.
HEHE
That was a bold-faced lie. Sure, she was attractive when he first saw her. Really attractive. Better men than him would’ve been extremely turned on by a woman like that. (And just maybe he was a little turned on by her. At first. A little.) But that woman was sick. She was disgusting. She got off on rape and murder and violence. She did not give him anything, except the creeps. But he refused to argue this point with her. It wasn’t an appropriate conversation to have with a thirteen-year-old girl. Even if she was going on fifty-two.
Holly turned off the driveway and stomped off into the woods ahead of him and he set out after her.
“She kept saying she could sense me and my ‘powers.’ I don’t even have any powers.”
IT SOUNDED TO ME LIKE SHE CAN SENSE PEOPLE WITH CERTAIN SPECIAL ABILITIES
“But I don’t have any special abilities.”
NO, I THINK YOU DO
“Huh?”
THERE’S A LOT OF THINGS YOU CAN DO. YOU CAN SEE THE UNSEEN, FOR EXAMPLE
“Sometimes.”
YOU HAVE PROPHETIC DREAMS
He nodded. Occasionally. (And they were a pain in the ass.)
AND SOMEWHERE IN YOUR BRAIN YOU HAVE THAT PROFOUND SECRET YOU FOUND THE DAY YOU MET ME. THAT KIND OF MAKES YOU SPECIAL
He still had no idea how that even worked…
AND IT GAVE YOU THAT HEALING THING
It did, but… He turned the phone around and looked at the back of his hand, at the bandage Diane had placed over the cut there. He peeled it back and examined the wound. It still looked perfectly fresh. It wasn�
��t healing nearly as fast as the injuries he received the day he first met Holly.
WHEN IT WORKS, I GUESS
He thought the rapid healing he did in Illinois was a result of that profound secret he discovered on his first adventure into the weird, but it didn’t always work so well. Not all injuries were so quick to heal.
Maybe it was only magic-related injuries that healed extra-fast.
He pressed the bandage back over the cut and turned his attention to the thickening brush.
“So that psycho woman thinks I’m like her and the other agents?”
SOUNDS LIKE IT
“What, does she just rip open her shirt and throw herself at any guy who might have the potential to be a psychotic killer? I mean, what the hell? Who gets turned on by stuff like that?”
WEIRD, PSYCHO, SLUTTY CHICKS WITH GOD COMPLEXES, APPARENTLY
“Apparently. And what the hell was all that ‘sexual energy’ nonsense?”
I’VE HEARD OF IT BEFORE. THE IDEA THAT SEXUALITY HAS ITS OWN ENERGY
“That’s really a thing?”
SOME PEOPLE BELIEVE IT CAN BE HARNESSED AND USED, LIKE MAGIC. IN HER CASE, IT SEEMS LIKE SHE BELIEVES SHE CAN UTILIZE SEXUAL ENERGY TO ABSORB AND SHARE POWER
“So it’s real?”
I CAN’T SAY FOR SURE. I NEVER BELIEVED IN IT, TO BE HONEST. BUT I ALSO DIDN’T BELIEVE IN MAGIC BEFORE WE MET HOLLY, SO WHO KNOWS?
That was true. It was a weird world out there. More and more, it seemed like anything was possible.
WE DO KNOW ONE THING, AT LEAST
“What’s that?”
WE KNOW WHO THE WOMAN WITH THE DEVIL HORNS WAS IN HOLLY’S VISIONS
He’d nearly forgotten about that. Holly’s divination. The spell.
IF THE HORNS FIT…
They did indeed.
The brush was growing too thick to keep talking. It kept catching on the charger cord. He slipped them both back into his pocket and focused on forcing his way back to the Top-Down Bar’s parking lot.
The woman claimed to be able to sense that he had “power” but not what that power was, precisely. She clearly hadn’t known, for example, that he was aware of the unseen. Or that he’d had previous experience with her “company.” She knew he was lying when he told her he’d never killed anyone, but she didn’t seem to catch him in any other lies. And he’d told quite a few. She acted like she knew all about him. But she genuinely had no clue that he was repulsed by her? She’d seemed perfectly confident that all she had to do was make a few dirty comments, stuff her tongue in his mouth and expose herself to him and he’d be her personal slave for the rest of his life. Even in the end, when she locked him in the basement, she must’ve known he’d escape. She didn’t even bother taking his phone from him.