I thought about calling the Sheriff. He knew about the weird shit that happened in Ashburn, and burglars and trespassers were clearly his jurisdiction. But then I remembered Marie’s gardeners and the magic spells protecting her place. Her defenses hadn’t stopped whoever was on the deck, which meant the lurker must not have meant Marie any harm.
I unlocked the door with as little noise as possible before turning the knob and opening the door. The woman on the deck turned to face me, and I recognized her at once.
It was Laura Henders, standing in a paper hospital gown, looking at me with cloudy white eyes and dried dirt on the side of her face, like she’d woken up on the ground—or maybe under it.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” I said, “but the last time I saw you, you were wearing a white blanket.”
She made a guttural noise, then stumbled down the stairs and took off running across the lawn, toward the forest that bordered the back of Marie’s yard.
I ripped off my goggles so I could see better and chased after her. Even though I felt light and fast in John’s body, she made it to the woods before I could catch her.
Within seconds, I was clawing my way through dense tree branches and tall razor grass before ending up on a paved walking trail surrounded and insulated by tall pine trees and dense underbrush on both sides.
I looked up and down the trail, but Laura was nowhere in sight.
As I walked along and tried to catch my breath, dead silence surrounded me. Either the forest was devoid of animal and insect life, or all the critters and animals were keeping their mouths shut for a reason. The crescent moon shone directly overhead, and a thin fog started to gather around my ankles.
Just as I decided to head back to Marie’s house, my senses screamed for me to run—to get away as fast as I could.
Before I could move, a loud braying split the muted night.
First, I heard the animal. Then I smelled it.
When I turned around, the giant black goat from The Farm was standing with its horned head bowed and its glowing red eyes leveled directly at me.
Chapter 32
THE GOAT’S MOUTH didn’t move, but the air around me vibrated with the same unearthly low voice I’d heard at The Farm.
“We have unfinished business, demon,” the goat said as it towered above me.
Its eyes glowed a deep amber, and its huge body was so black it seemed to swallow the moonlight. Slowly, it worked its way around to my left. With each step, the creature edged closer, and I crouched down, preparing to meet its attack with my dagger in one hand and Gus in the other. Then I noticed something that made my heart miss a beat. The dagger wasn’t glowing. I glanced over at the guitar neck, and it wasn’t giving off its god-forged white magic either. I’d gone from being well-armed to facing a goat demon with a dagger and an oversized toothpick.
Before I could figure at what was happening, the goat charged, and I tried to jump out of the way. Even with the speed of a demon, I wasn’t quick enough, and one of the goat’s massive horns pierced my side as it threw me off the trail and into a patch of dense grass below an old weeping willow.
I jumped to my feet and faced the goat as it approached me again.
“You are different from when first we met so long ago,” the voice said. “You are weaker.”
I dropped Gus on the ground and pressed my open hand against my wound to staunch the black blood that was oozing out of me. I thought about trying to explain to the goat that I wasn’t the same John it hated—that I was sure we could have a great relationship if we could only start over from scratch.
But before I could try my horrible plan, the creature lowered its head and charged.
I stepped to the side again, but this time, I slashed with my dagger as I spun away. The blade wasn’t glowing, but it was still sharp and made of iron, and I was rewarded with a spurt of black blood shooting out from the goat’s neck.
My victory was short-lived, and before I could ready myself, the animal turned around and charged a third time.
Both of its horns caught me full-on, piercing my chest, as the giant animal picked me up and tossed me into the air again. When I landed, the impact with the earth was so hard, I thought I was close to dying. All the bargaining with Ahriman and selling my soul to him was about to become worthless. I winced as I wondered where my soul would go once I died in John’s body, but I was pretty sure I knew the answer, and it wasn’t good.
I propped myself up on one arm and waited for the inevitable as the monstrous creature ambled toward me, like a killer who knew his victim was beaten, with no way to escape.
“Finish it,” I said. “At least I’ll finally get out of this town.”
The goat came closer, and with purpose, it placed one of its hooves on my chest, immobilizing me.
“You do not have to die,” the voice said, “You need only show me the way out of this prison, where I have been trapped for so many centuries, and I will let you live.”
I spit black blood on the ground and laughed.
“You’re stepping on the wrong guy,” I said. “I don’t know the way out. I’m trying to leave Ashburn, too.”
As the goat pressed harder on my chest, I heard footsteps to my right and the familiar voice of Oizys’ assistant, Blaire.
“Step away, most profane Goat of Mendes,” he said.
The goat turned its attention to Blaire, but it didn’t lift its hoof.
“I am nothing compared to you,” Blaire said with conviction to the goat. “But you know my mistress, and she will see you suffer if you harm this demon.”
As if punctuating his final word, Blaire held out a small book in front of him, like a priest showing a Bible to a possessed child.
The goat arched its neck and screamed like a human, the sound piercing my skull and grating against my brain.
With the small book still held high, Blaire turned to me.
“I can save you from this, but you will owe me a favor this time,” he said. “No matter what I ask.”
One of the last things I wanted was to owe someone else a favor, but the absolute last thing I wanted to do was to die.
“I’ll owe you big time,” I said, with a tight-lipped smile. “Now could you please get on with it? This thing is crushing my chest.”
“Do you give your bond?”
“Oh, for crap’s sake,” I said, closing my eyes and pretending I knew what I was doing. “There. My bond is given.”
Blaire nodded, then held the book higher and spoke in a language that sounded like garbled sounds with no structure. The goat must have understood them, because it lost interest in me and bleated and stomped its front hooves, shaking the ground like thunder. I couldn’t see the title written in gold leaf on the book’s spine, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that it was a powerful tome—way too rare of an item to be owned by a human like Blaire.
While the goat was distracted, I picked up my dagger, while trying unsuccessfully with my other hand to staunch the bleeding from one of the puncture wounds in my chest.
I tried closing the distance between me and the goat, but before I could stumble very far, the animal glanced at Blaire, weighing its chance of success before backing into the shadow of the weeping willow.
Even with my goggles on, the giant animal blended in with the tree’s shadow cast by the moonlight. When I blinked, the goat was gone.
Blaire rushed to my side and helped me sit down with my back against a small sapling. As I tried catching my breath, I could feel my wounds healing and the pain slowly leaving my body.
I stared blankly at the ground, feeling better by the moment, but stunned.
Blaire looked down at me and grimaced through pursed lips.
“It’s not any of my business, but there is something decidedly different about you. You should not have needed my help that much. If you wish to share whatever is happening to you, I would offer you my vow not to divulge your secret to anyone.”
For a second, I considered
taking him up on his offer, but I ended up keeping my mouth shut. After all, Blaire worked for Oizys, so no matter how good he seemed, and no matter how much he’d just saved my ass, I could never trust him completely.
“I’m fine, but I won’t forget what you just did. And before you ask, yes, you are no longer in my debt, and I owe you a huge debt. Whatever I can do, name it.”
He shrugged almost effeminately and smiled.
“Trust me. I will. I know you see me as only a lowly servant, but I have big plans, and now I have a way to make those plans come true.”
“Where’d you get that?” I said, nodding toward the small black book still clutched in his hand. “Must be pretty powerful to stop that goat in its tracks.”
“This volume belongs to my mistress. She does not know that I have borrowed it.”
“Like I said, I’m more than grateful for the assist,” I said, shaking my head in fake condemnation. “But you know I’m going to have to let Oizys know that you took her book. It’s only fair to her.”
Blaire tried to hide the shiver that ran up his spine. He looked up at me with a slight grin and rosy cheeks.
“Whatever you think is necessary, sir. I completely understand.”
Chapter 33
BACK ON THE main neighborhood street, Blaire and I parted ways. I looked down at Gus and then my dagger. Both were glowing like they were supposed to again, so I removed my goggles, exhausted, and headed back to Marie’s house.
Pretty soon, I was standing in her driveway, staring up at her darkened window, inhaling the cool, dewy night air.
A part of me wanted to go back up to her room and tell her about chasing Laura off her deck. But, given her current state, I didn’t think she’d understand what I was talking about or even care. Plus, as much as I liked Marie, I wasn’t excited about falling asleep next to a zombie again. I knew she wasn’t interested in eating what little brains I had in my head, but it didn’t feel right lying down with the undead. Instead, I decided to go home and wake up the next morning with a succubus from Hell—a much better idea all around.
Before I left, I locked Marie’s back door and made sure Laura Henders was nowhere to be seen. After the house was secure, I slipped into the Audi and drove away as quietly as possible, listening to a station that played mellow acoustic remakes of once-popular songs—the perfect backdrop for my tired mood.
The final chord from a cello remake of AC/DC’s Hell’s Bells was still ringing in my ears when I pulled up to John’s driveway and into the garage. As I got out of the car, I wondered if my hellhound had pooped in the house or if he’d eaten one of the neighbors. Such was the life of a respectable demon living in the ‘burbs.
As I stepped into the living room, Shadow raised his head from the floor, his ears standing at full attention. He looked at me, picked his leash up with his mouth, and stared at me, hopeful.
I shook my head and laughed.
“You don’t need a leash in the yard.”
He dropped the leash and wagged his tail.
“And I know you can walk through that door without my help any time you want.”
He ignored me and gave me his best big-eyed doggie stare. I gave in, rolled my eyes, and opened the back door.
Shadow shot onto the deck, then ran into the middle of the yard. Within a second, he’d taken a dump as big as my head. I turned away, not wanting to even think about what he’d had for dinner.
After letting him sniff around the yard for a few minutes, I gave a low whistle, and he came running right away.
I cursed as I looked at the clock. It was 3:30 in the morning and I was yawning and in desperate need of rest. I didn’t expect to see Sybil upstairs, but when I opened the door to the master bedroom, to my surprise, she was asleep under the covers.
I wasn’t sure if stealth was one of my new demonic powers or not, but I did my best to brush my teeth and to wash the scent of sandalwood and jasmine from my face before slipping into bed.
Pulling the sheets up to my chin as quietly as possible, I tried not to wake Sybil, but I wasn’t successful.
“Thank you for letting the dog out,” she said in a flat voice with her back facing me. “Where were you tonight?”
I closed my eyes in the darkness and felt the bliss of promised sleep washing over me.
“Did you deal with Marco?” she said, jolting me awake just as I was dozing off. “You can’t let that stand. John wouldn’t have.”
“I can guess what John would have done. But that isn’t me,” I said. “I paid Marco a visit, but I don’t think he did it.”
“Do you have anything else you would like to tell me?”
“I ran into Marie and had to take her home. That’s why I’m late.”
There was a slight pause.
“She’s back?”
I nodded in the dark.
“Did she say why?”
“She couldn’t remember anything.”
“So you took her home and hung out with her for a while? Watched Netflix?”
“She was pretty shaken up, and I found a woman sneaking around her house. I chased her, but she got away. It was Laura Henders, the woman who died yesterday. She was mostly alive tonight and a pretty fast runner. She led me into a trap, of course.”
“She’s a zombie,” Sybil said, flipping onto her back, but still not looking at me. “That’s something your friend, Marie, could have done, in case you hadn’t thought of that.”
“I did think of that possibility, but someone turned Marie into a zombie, too. And then there was this demonic goat that tried to kill me. Did I tell you about the goat? I don’t think John and the goat got along very well.”
Sybil rolled over and faced me. Even in the dim light, I could see her red eyes simmering like dying coals left in a fire.
“No, you did not tell me anything about meeting, much less fighting, the Goat of Mendes.”
“Yeah, that’s what Blaire called it,” I said, nodding.
“Blaire’s involved with this, too?” she said, lifting her head and raising one eyebrow.
“He showed up out of nowhere and saved my ass, for a price, of course.”
“You know, most of the creatures around here—John could have taken them out easily, mostly because he knew their names. But even John would have thought twice about going up against the Mendes Goat. Without the goat’s name, John would never have been able to defeat him on his own.”
“Good to know,” I said, not wanting to admit that I didn’t know the real names of the supernatural creatures in Ashburn, including hers.
I looked over at Sybil, but she was staring at the ceiling.
Even though I was beyond tired, I rolled from one side to the other for the next hour, unable to fall asleep.
When the darkness overtook me at last, my dreams were plagued by images of Ahriman and the sounds and smells of the Mendes Goat.
Chapter 34
THE GRUMBLING IN my stomach told me it was late in the morning when I awoke. Because the sun was out, I thought there was a good chance Sybil was in bed, but I was wrong.
She was gone, but as soon as my foot hit the floor, Shadow was there, living up to his name.
“You’re not as scary as you think,” I said with a grin, but when I reached down to pet him, he dropped his head and curled his lip.
Without thinking, I pointed a finger at him.
“No,” I said in a stern voice. To my surprise, my digit remained attached, and Shadow sat down and offered me the top of his head, willingly.
“Good dog,” I said as I rubbed his cranium.
I’d spent the night in John and Sybil’s bedroom three times already, but I’d never really taken a good look at it with my goggles. I checked out every wall, the closets, and under the bed, but I didn’t find anything magical.
I slipped off the goggles and snooped around the old-fashioned way. Other than John’s choice of reading material, which ranged from epic fantasy to non-fiction books about science, I didn’t fin
d any personal items that told me anything about who John was, or why he’d given his life for mine. The most interesting parts of the bedroom were the wooden bedposts and the deep grooves worn into them.
I pulled open the nightstand drawer and was greeted with myriad sex toys, handcuffs, and spiky instruments that could easily have doubled as torture devices. I shut the drawer and hoped Sybil wasn’t in the habit of using them.
Next, I went into the bathroom with Shadow at my heels. I rummaged through the cabinet drawers and searched under the sink. The only thing out of the ordinary was his medicine cabinet, but only because it was devoid of medications—one of the benefits, I supposed, of being a demon.
With a shake of my head, I put on my jeans and a solid black tee-shirt and made my way downstairs to continue my search.
The living room was littered with innocuous knick knacks, including a small statue of the Buddha, a pair of blue marble bookmarks shaped like owls, a Chinese Pi disk, and fifty or so small notebooks of various sizes and designs. I thumbed through a couple of them, but they were all empty, and their spines were unbroken.
All in all, John and Sybil had kept a messy house with far too many stains of unknown origins on the carpets and walls.
I was about to brew some java to start my day, but I stopped when I noticed a red glow in the corner of my eye. When I turned to look at it, it disappeared. And as soon as I turned away, I saw it again. This time, I slipped on my goggles before turning to face it. When I did, the door to the basement stairs was shimmering with red waves of magic.
Opening the door and flipping on the stairwell light, I descended into the basement with Shadow following close behind me. At the bottom of the staircase, I stood with my mouth open, stunned as I stared at the once-empty basement.
I’d been prepared to see any number of things down there, like a dead body, more blood stains, or even a torture chamber. What I found instead was a fully stocked recording studio filled with instruments and gear.
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