by Misty Dietz
“Do you feel that?” His voice scratched the back of his throat.
“Aye.” Spencer’s eyes roamed over the crowd restlessly. All mirth fled from his face, replaced by cold resolve. The thick, oily energy that had slithered into the place meant demons. Dozens of them by the way Nate’s skin prickled and his hearing amplified. “My comm unit failed earlier. Put the team on high alert. Dorian should have felt the presence, too, but tell him to stay where he is until we know what’s here. Find Jaws and Stark to clue them in.” When Spencer left to alert the human security team members, Nate pulled a man off a bar stool and climbed up to have a better vantage point. A head stood out not only because it was balding and somewhat gray amid a sea of in-their-prime college students, but also because it was racing against the current.
Mason Jacobs.
Jessie’s uncle clasped something under his left arm as he scrambled onto the DJ stage. After he placed the object on top of the disc jockey console, his fingers pushed something across the wood, his lips moving quickly like he was on death row praying for salvation.
Nate’s heart stopped. He’d seen hundreds of rectangular pieces of wood like that over the last century. Ouija board and planchette.
DJ Immortalis approached to see what the other man was up to. Mason whipped a knife out of his pocket and slashed so viciously at the DJ’s neck his head listed backwards as his body slumped to the floor.
Shit, shit, shit! Nate pushed a mental picture of what he’d witnessed to Spencer, Katherine, and Dorian. He glanced back to see the other bartenders helping Jessie off the bar. He had to trust they’d protect her while he focused on the bigger threat to everyone. He jumped down from the stool and bulldozed his way through the dancers toward Mason as a very bad thought crossed his mind.
Ouija boards were used to call upon dark spirits.
If Mason did so while drawing from the power in the Guardian insignia etched on the DJ’s platform, he could create a portal.
The Seam.
“Out of my way!” Nate snarled. He was ten feet from Mason when fire erupted from the upside-down, heart-shaped planchette in Mason’s hands, setting off an enormous explosion of solid, blinding light that sent Nate and everyone nearby careening back twenty feet. The blaring electronic music transmuted into radio static. Screams all around him merged with a high pitched squeal spliced with grainy static. Like someone was turning an old-fashioned radio dial, frantically searching for a station.
Draped layers of taffeta shook and floated down over the u-benches set back into the cove seating areas. Lights on the tables, in the booths, and over the dance floor flickered, faster and faster, like strobes out of control, while the life-sized zombies undulated like they were in their death throes.
Or coming back to life.
Nate pushed to his feet, rushing toward Mason who now stood on top of the DJ console with his arms at a forty-five-degree angle, palms out. The faux webbing strung over the dance floor vibrated, animating hundreds of plastic spiders that descended toward the dance floor, dangling from translucent threads that somehow acted like arms holding Nate immobile.
Mason reached into his pocket and pulled out a jar of what looked like blood and a box of matches.
“Mason, no!” Nate’s heart thundered. Blood spells were prodigious trouble. Especially if the blood was laced with accelerant and ignited.
Mason picked up DJ Immortalis’s limp body like it weighed naught but a feather. He draped it over the edge of the stage so the DJ’s blood streamed down over the Guardian insignia. Then he poured the jarful of blood on Immortalis, tossed a lit match to ignite the body, and chanted an ancient summoning spell.
A sickening acrid smell assaulted Nate’s nose. Sulfur.
Nonono! Nate called on his element to make the floor surge towards the DJ’s stage.
Unfathomable layers of the earth shook, deeper and more comprehensively than even Nate could make the ground rattle.
“The legions are coming. They’re coming for you!” Mason rasped in an unusually deep voice as Nate finally shook free of the spiderwebs and reached Mason, grasping his legs to take him down. Mason’s head cracked against the stage floor, knocking him out.
The club went black except for the continued burning of Immortalis’s body. There was stunned silence in the eerie pitch. The hairs raised on the back of Nate’s neck as a brittle cold stole around him, sapping his will to move.
Then the world fell.
Chapter 21
Monsters are real.
Jessie coughed in the dark, trying to get her bearings. Her left arm felt like it was on fire, sliced open from something—shards of glass, likely—and doused with eighty proof alcohol from the bottles that had tumbled from the shelves. Moans, crying, and screams punctuated the darkness. Complete panic and mayhem had erupted as the club goers stampeded toward the exits. Her stomach pitched at the smell of rotten eggs. She brought her hand up to cover her mouth as she gagged. What the hell had happened? One minute things were normal, the next she was watching Mason kill one of her friends.
Her uncle had murdered Immortalis. My God!
Nate had taken her possessed uncle down. A normal human male wouldn’t have been able to do that single-handedly, not in Mason’s state.
After that, an earthquake. Never mind that earthquakes were supposedly rare and unremarkable in Minnesota. She’d been airborne for what seemed like an eternity. Weightless as the world dropped. Or maybe it was just the club? When the tremors had ceased, they’d come to a bone-cracking stop.
Her stomach twisted, and her head pounded. She gingerly fingered the goose egg swelling on the back of her noggin.
“Jessie, you okay, gorda?”
José. She coughed again. “Yeah. Be careful for the glass. I think it’s everywhere. Is Drake with you?” And where was Dante? She heard glass crunch underfoot and smelled José’s cologne as he leaned closer to be heard over the sounds of chaos. “Drake’s unconscious. We have to get out of here.”
Jessie, where are you?
Nate? Her skin prickled. She’d heard his voice as clearly as if he were actually speaking to her. It wasn’t the first time either, which only fueled her increasing alarm that Nate was…more than human. Then again, maybe she’d hit her head even harder than she’d thought.
José’s hands came under her knees and against her back like he was going to lift her. She pushed away from him. “No, help Drake instead. I’ll see about getting us some light so we can find the—”
She was going to say exit, but after what had happened, she wasn’t so sure she’d like what she’d find outside these walls either. Call it instinct. Maybe survival. She reached for the flashlight velcroed underneath her work station.
“No, Jessie. It’s too late for—”
The emergency generator restored power to the building. The lights and club music resumed like nothing had happened, yet the screaming and pushing of the crowd seemed amplified now that they could see the terror and panic reflected in one another’s faces. Jessie’s muscles locked, watching people trample each other, clawing their way to the exits like animals. Most of them were bloody and dirty from the rubble of the earthquake. Their costumes and the club’s Halloween decorations created a macabre scene from Hell that had come to life.
“Dante!” she yelled toward all corners of the club, knowing it was futile, but needing to anyway.
No one could get out. They pounded and shoved, but the exit doors wouldn’t budge. How many people were under that mass, trampled by now? Please don’t let Dante be one of them.
Jessie’s heart thundered against her rib cage, and she was short of breath. We can’t die in here. Not like this. She swung to her left. Terrible emotion opened her mouth and squeezed her chest. Drake. Slumped back against his station, eyes wide open, a corkscrew embedded in his skull. “Oh my God!”
José grabbed her. “He’s gone, Jess. We need to get out of here!”
“How? We’re trapped!” she yelled back.
&n
bsp; “Jessie!”
She glanced toward the dance floor. Her heart surged to see Nate pushing through the throng as though people were mere gnats. He vaulted the counter, pulled her from José’s grasp, wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her hair. She could swear his heartbeat slowed next to her ear. But then, she was crazy, right? She was hallucinating all of this. Nate was human, and he hadn’t vaulted countertops, shoved entire groups of people down like paper dolls, or commanded the floors to come alive beneath their goddamn feet.
Please let it all be a bad dream.
Because if it wasn’t, she was falling in love with a monster.
She swallowed back a wave of nausea and pushed out of his arms. “What happened here? You know, don’t you?” His guarded expression cleared more of the fog in her head. It also made her more afraid. “Jesus, t-there’s been some kind of natural disaster, right? Or…or has the next world war started? Was it a bomb? I saw Mason—” Her voice broke as she raised her hand, mimicking Mason when he’d cut Immortalis.
Nate cupped her face, staring intently into her eyes. “Stay with me, Jess. I need to get you downstairs. It’s the safest place right now.”
“What are you even saying? There is no downstairs anymore, Nate! In case you didn’t feel it, we just had an epic earthquake. Nobody can get out because all the doors are blocked. They’re killing each other trying to get out!”
“I don’t have time to answer your questions. I’ll take care of this, I promise.”
But he couldn’t. How could anyone? It would take an act of God to fix this.
New screams erupted near the DJ platform. Nate grabbed her arm, pulling her past José, steering her toward the hallway. She yanked her arm free of his grasp and turned to look toward the commotion.
Mason.
Dorian stood guard over her uncle, who was tied up and thrashing so hard his chair overturned. She lunged toward Mason, but Nate scooped her up and pushed his way through the crowd. She could hear Mason’s wild grunts and furious hissing over the music. No human could make sounds that loud. She looked over Nate’s shoulder and found Mason’s eyes trained on her. Yellow. Glowing. Just like Eugene’s.
Another monster.
Nate turned into the hallway. She couldn’t see what was happening on the dance floor any more. “No! Put me down! Mason isn’t right. We need to stop him before he hurts anyone else. And I have to find Dante!”
Nate squeezed her more tightly, immobilizing her arms so she couldn’t wriggle free. “Your uncle is sick. I’ll take care of it and find Dante, but I need you downstairs.”
“Sick? I saw him murder someone in cold blood. And his eyes…”
“How long has your uncle been involved in the occult?” he asked.
Everything inside her froze. “What?”
“How long has he used or owned occult objects like Ouija boards, skulls, charms or amulets, items of the Zodiac, tarot cards, crystals, dragon figures, or even Yin and Yang symbols?”
Jessie shook her head, not able to follow. Mason had accused Nate of hiding occult items in the downstairs storage room, but now Nate was saying the same of Mason?
“His eyes were yellow,” she blurted as Nate stopped at the storage room door he’d shown her a few hours ago. It felt like years. He set her down carefully like he was afraid she’d collapse at his feet. “Earlier in the night. I thought I’d imagined the same thing about the club promoter’s eyes. What the hell is going on and what are you?”
He searched her eyes. He looked so human. He was going to tell her something important. She could feel it. She moved closer to him, but wrapped her arms around her trunk. The next few moments passed in a blur. Nate raised his arms as though shielding her, speaking in a tongue she didn’t recognize. The door to his private sanctuary flew open of its own accord. “I’m sorry, Jessie.”
She had a fleeting glance of an attractive salt and pepper-haired man who approached the head of the stairs above them before Nate shoved her inside the room and slammed the door, leaving her inside the warm space alone. The unknown man’s husky laughter carried down the stairs and through the door along with what sounded like screams from the main level.
She flung herself against the solid wood. She twisted and shook the door knob until her vocal chords ached with her vows that Nate would be sorry. Oh, he would.
The son of a bitch had locked her in.
Chapter 22
Jessie dropped her hands to her side and leaned her forehead against the warm door. A primitive voice in her head urged her to lose herself in screams like those erupting upstairs. They were so awful she wanted to crawl up into the fireplace flue in case something managed to find her down here.
Something…like what?
Monsters.
“Stop it!” She spun around in the room alight with candles in sconces and tall, glass hurricanes. How was this room still here? She looked at the ceiling and walls, but there weren’t any cracks in the foundation. Still, she felt like a sitting duck. What if there was another quake? A friend from California had told her that aftershocks were common. That was bad enough, but honestly, there was more to this situation than an earthquake.
Something bad had happened. Something epic. Nate had said ‘occult.’
And then there were Eugene and Mason’s scary eyes.
She ran to open all the cupboards. She was a visual person. If she could write it down, she’d be better able to draw connections. To fit the pieces of the puzzle together. But there was no technology or paper, not even any pens to make notes on paper towels about what she’d observed.
Who was that man at the top of the stairs? He was sophisticated in a suit and tie, his face friendly and clean-shaven from what she’d gathered in the couple of seconds before Nate had pushed her into this room. She looked again at the inscription on the mantle.
You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons;
you cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.
A coldness fluttered at the edges of her sanity. Mason had warned her about Nate, but then she’d watched her uncle kill in cold blood. It was so horrific. Was he sick, fried on drugs, or…? Nate had warned her that Mason wasn’t all that he seemed, but then what was Nate, exactly?
Things didn’t add up. Things like his unusual physical strength and agility. Questions had been nagging at the edge of her mind the last several days, but she’d been so determined to push them away. She didn’t want anything to spoil the remaining time she had with him.
Well, she couldn’t ignore the questions any more. How could he have vaulted over the bar like that or carried her through the throng and down the stairs without even a hitch in his breathing? What about Nate showing up in Mason’s neighborhood three days ago? He hadn’t driven across two suburbs and left his car in the wrong neighborhood to ask them if they wanted a tour of TERRA. No, he’d been carrying the woman who’d raved about evil skeletons.
Then there was the so-called special effects in the club’s flooring.
And his cheek wound and ghastly belly scar that were mysteriously gone. They had been there. She’d swear it on her grandparents’ burial plots.
What the hell was going on?
A tremendous crash reverberated above her. Have to get out of here. She poked through the cupboards and drawers again. She grabbed a couple of butter knives and a fork, cursing when she looked at her costume, realizing that she had very few options when it came to hiding weapons. She tossed the fork back into the drawer and shoved a pair of knives in her knee high socks. They were fairly visible, and she wasn’t sure she’d actually have the cojones to use them if it came to it, but but she felt better knowing they were there.
She ran to the bookcase and reached for the biggest hard cover when the door opened.
Dorian. “What are you doing here?” Was he a monster, too?
The tall, underwear-model-look-alike wiped blood from his swollen nose. “Juice it up, girl. Someone told me I’m supp
osed to take you to Nate, so let’s git.”
Whether he was a monster or not, she refused to be trapped down here one more minute. She barely kept up with Dorian as they hauled ass upstairs. Once she reached the main level, she gagged at the stench of body odor and rotten eggs. She tottered, nearly falling back down the stairs. Bodies—people!—lying everywhere in the hallway. So many it was like an obstacle course. They must have dropped while in flight from…whatever was after them.
Was it still here?
She tried to take a deep breath, but air stuck in her throat. She stopped weaving around the bodies, reaching out for the wall to steady herself. “Oh God, they’re all dead!”
Dorian glanced back at her with a frown. “Only a few dozen. The rest we put to sleep like we always do while we handle— ” He must have seen her eyes widen. “Aw, naw.” He turned completely around and bent to stare into her eyes. “Fuck me! You don’t know anything yet, do you?” He spun away and hammered a fist into the wall, grumbling how Nate was going to nail his ass to a tree.
Jessie knelt down to check the pulse of the three bodies closest to her. Their skin remained warm even though the temperature must have dropped at least twenty degrees since she’d last been up here. And all of them had a steady pulse, thank you Lord.
Dorian hauled her to her feet and started marching her back toward the stairs. She tried to pull out of his grasp, but he only held on tighter. “Where are we going?”
“I made a mistake. Guess I wasn’t supposed to get you after all.” His face clouded with a grim determination that only served to feed her own. She needed to find Nate and Dante. Needed to know her grandparents were okay. Her body softened when Dorian’s booted foot hit the first stair. When his fingers relaxed on her forearm, she lurched back, breaking his hold. She turned and ran for the dance floor. A roar like something from her worst nightmare ricocheted around her, raising the hair all over her body as she came face to face with something unimaginable. She opened her mouth and screamed.