The Possession

by Jennifer Armintrout

“The tranquilizer,” he repeated, then cursed as Nathan broke free and plunged through the hedge.

  This time, Max made sure not to get tangled in the electric fence. By the time he fought his way clear of the branches, Nathan had already vaulted over the back wall of the yard they’d stumbled into. “Bella, hurry your ass up!”

  She charged past him with speed he had no chance of matching, so he didn’t bother to try. For a moment, he considered waiting for her to bring their quarry back. She’d certainly get to him first. Then Max remembered what she’d looked like after her last tangle with Nathan, and fierce protectiveness forced him into motion.

  I am not worried about her because of the things she said. I am just looking out for a friend who might be in trouble. Two friends who might be in trouble. I’m doing a good thing. And I have no feelings.

  He scrambled up the wall, thanking God or the devil or whoever was responsible, for his unusual ability to scale vertical obstacles. The first thing he saw on the other side was the gun, lying uselessly in the grass. He lifted his gaze and saw Bella and, looming over her, pinning her to the damp ground, Nathan.

  “Shoot him!” she shouted. Battle-calm though she might be, her eyes were wide. She was terrified. “Shoot him!”

  The creature masquerading as his best friend snarled, a fierce sound that raised the hair on the back of Max’s neck. Nathan’s face twisted for a moment into feeding mode, then back to his more recognizable features. But it wasn’t the monster Max saw there. Nathan’s eyes were watery and rimmed in red, his forehead creased in inhuman concentration. He opened his mouth to issue a desperate scream. “Shoot me!”

  Max didn’t hesitate, and pulled the trigger. He wasn’t sure he would have wasted time if Bella had insisted he stake Nathan. Seeing her that way, trembling and helpless, Max had a horrible realization shoot through him: that he would have killed Nathan if it was the only way to stop him from hurting her.

  The shot struck Nathan in the chest, and for a moment, Max worried that killing him was exactly what he’d done. He raced toward his fallen friend.

  When their eyes met, Nathan seemed to understand his concern. “It’s not in the heart. It’s not in the heart.” Then he closed his eyes.

  Max collapsed on the grass beside him, but was back on his feet a second later. Bella.

  She lay sprawled on the ground, taking fast and shallow breaths. When she turned her head and caught sight of him, she smiled weakly. “I am sorry, I thought I had him.”

  “Are you okay? Did he hurt you?” Max dropped to his knees beside her. “You shouldn’t move, you know, in case anything is broken.”

  “I should stay here until the owners of that palace call the authorities and have me hauled away for trespassing?” She stood slowly, brushing off her clothing and shooing away his hands. “I will be all right. Besides, we have to get him back to his apartment before the drugs wear off.”

  “How long do we have?” Max looked reluctantly away from her, to where Nathan lay in the grass, his chest barely moving.

  “Ninety minutes at the most. Only enough so I can make a clean getaway.” She shrugged one shoulder as if trying to work it back into the socket. “I have never had to transport anyone before.”

  Max eyed his friend’s body, then the woman at his side. “I think he’ll be too heavy on my own, but I don’t want you to help me if you’re not up to it.”

  “I am fine. Treating me like porcelain is not going to change anything,” she said firmly.

  He didn’t argue. There was no point, as long as she believed he was completely infatuated with her.

  That’s the problem, he decided. Her wishful thinking.

  Knowing that made it much easier for him to endure the ride back to the apartment.

  By the time they got Nathan up the stairs, the tranquilizer had nearly worn off. He dangled between them—Bella at his feet, Max lifting his shoulders—like a very drunk, very heavy piece of supertenderized meat.

  “Take him to the bedroom,” Max ordered, nodding in the direction of Nathan’s room. “He’s got a brass headboard. We’ll be able to cuff him to that.”

  “You came up with that pretty easy,” Nathan mumbled with a tired-sounding laugh. “Been fantasizing about me?”

  “If he is lucid, perhaps it is unnecessary to restrain him,” Bella suggested, her gold eyes locking with Max’s for an uncomfortable moment.

  He looked away. He didn’t want to be accused of staring googley-eyed at her or anything.

  “No!” Nathan stiffened, and Max struggled to keep hold of him.

  Grunting with the strain of supporting his friend’s body, Max motioned toward the bedroom with another quick jerk of his head. “I saw what he was going to do to you. No offense to either of you, but until we get this mess sorted out, we’re keeping him locked up.”

  Bella looked as though she would argue, but closed her mouth in a tight line. “It is a good sign he is talking,” she said, clearly trying to sound cheerful for Max’s benefit.

  “Is it?” he asked through clenched teeth. He didn’t need her pity optimism.

  She dropped the act at once. “I do not know. Maybe?”

  “It means he’s not possessed. At least, not by a demon.” If he were, he’d be completely out to lunch, with no occasional popping into the office as he’d been doing. Max wasn’t an exorcist or anything, but he’d seen a few cases of demonic possession in his time. Whatever had hold of Nathan wasn’t controlling him full-time.

  They shuffled down the hall to the bedroom. Max considered making a snide comment about this being the place where they’d first met, but he didn’t want to chance giving Belle even more of a wrong impression. “Get him up here.”

  Nathan groaned as they lifted him onto the bed. For the first time, Max noted the dark bruises marring nearly every inch of his body. Before, when they’d first captured him, it had been dark, and they’d been more concerned with the weird symbols carved into his skin to notice the state of the rest of him.

  “Jesus Christ,” Max exclaimed on an exhale. It was all he could think of to say.

  Bella covered her mouth, her gold eyes wide in shock. “What happened to him?”

  “I have no idea. I’d put money down that the Soul Eater has something to do with it.” His anger was so thick it could have choked him. He turned helplessly, his hands clutched in fists. He would have slapped the lamp from the bedside table to release some of his rage through destruction. But it wasn’t his lamp to break, it wasn’t his body that was ruined and it wasn’t his sire to be pissed at. With a deep breath he released with a curse, he turned back to the bed.

  “Where’s Carrie?” Nathan’s eyes, cloudy from the drugs, searched Max’s face with an intensity that made his skin crawl.

  How much did Nathan know? And how much should Max tell him?

  Thankfully, Bella took care of it for him. “She will be here soon. Lie down. I will get something for your bruises.”

  “There’s witch hazel. In the shop,” Nathan panted. “The drugs are wearing off. Do something!”

  “Give me the handcuffs.” For being afraid of him before, she was awfully take-charge now. Max went to the dresser to retrieve the cuffs. She held her hands out as if to catch them. Max shouldered past her.

  “Sorry, buddy,” he said under his breath as he stretched Nathan’s arms above his head.

  “Don’t let it happen again. Don’t let me go back there.” Nathan’s fingers wrapped around Max’s arm with terrifying strength.

  Now I know how a life preserver feels, Max thought, carefully withdrawing from his friend’s grasp. “We’re going to try and help you.”

  For a heart-stopping moment, Nathan’s face contorted into his vampire form, and he growled. Then his features returned to normal, as if they were wax melting, and he closed his eyes.

  “He is unconscious again,” Bella noted.

  Max wanted to snap at her, to tell her he knew Nathan was unconscious, but it would have been pointless. Sure,
it would make him feel better now, but later, when he had to go back to being civil, it would only make things that much more awkward. He snapped a cuff closed around one of Nathan’s wrists and threaded it behind the brass bars of the headboard. Bella improvised a rope with the sheet, until they could find something more suitable, and tied Nathan’s feet to the end of the bed.

  “He will be uncomfortable.” She stood with her arms folded across her chest, a critical, yet entirely unhelpful, look on her face.

  Max bit his tongue and cuffed Nathan’s other wrist. “Better him uncomfortable than us dead.”

  She shrugged, seeming to acquiesce to his logic, but with her it was hard to tell. In a bizarrely maternal gesture, she picked up a faded quilt from the floor and spread it over Nathan, folding the top back gently.

  Max followed her into the living room, where she reached for one of the research texts they’d abandoned the night before.

  “You should get some sleep before sunup,” he suggested. “That way, if we need anything during the day, you’ll be awake enough to go for it.” Really, he just wanted her unconscious so he wouldn’t have to deal with her, and having her sleep seemed like less trouble than knocking her out.

  To his annoyance, she settled on the couch, not in the tangled nest of blankets she seemed to prefer to furniture. “I will be fine. I am going to go through these books and see if there is some way I can help your friend.”

  “I’ll go down to the shop, check if there’s anything I missed.” Max left before she could offer to come with him, and bolted down the stairs two at a time.

  Outdoors, the night was slowly becoming morning. Since the day after he’d been changed, Max had always been able to tell the subtle shift from one day to the next without looking at a watch.

  It’s the smell of it. Night smells like death and dirt. When the morning wakes, no matter how dark the sky might still be, everything smells new again. Even this foul city.

  Max swiped at his cheek, remembering his sire’s lips there. Marcus had taught him so much that night, as they’d sat on the ledge atop their building, gazing across Chicago’s impressive skyline. It had been different then, of course. When Max was home, which wasn’t often, and when he couldn’t find someone or something to distract him from his solitude, which was even rarer, he went to the roof and wondered at the changes that had been made, even in his short lifetime. Or, after-lifetime, if he was feeling particularly sorry for himself.

  I wish you were here, Marcus. I have no idea what I’m doing.

  But his sire would have laughed and said something so sickly sweet and inspirational, such as “I believe in you” or “Have faith in yourself,” that Max would have had to trust him. Marcus always had a way of spinning frothy sentiments to concrete.

  Shaking his head at the thought, Max turned, only to find a pair of startling gold eyes studying him intently.

  “Jesus Christ, make some noise when you sneak up on a person!” he shouted, trying to calm his thundering pulse.

  “You should not take his name in vain.” Bella moved past him, somehow still exotic and graceful in jeans and one of Carrie’s T-shirts. “I came down to look through the herb pantry. There might be something I can use to calm him.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Max said, slipping a key into the lock on the shop door and holding it open for her. And it was a good idea. He’d have thought of it himself, if he’d known there was an—“Hey, how did you know there was an herb pantry?”

  She shrugged one shoulder, running her fingers idly along the spines of books on the shelves as she passed them. “When I was tracking him, I broke in. It was not hard. There is only cardboard over that broken window.”

  Max looked to the door, where the tape he’d used to meticulously seal the empty box to the window frame hung limp and useless at one corner. “Did you take anything?”

  “I am a killer, not a thief,” she said, tossing him a playful smile over her shoulder.

  Swearing under his breath, he followed her. He’d come down here to escape her. He was fast learning that was an impossibility. “Carrie’s going to be back soon. I think it would be better for her to see him when he’s not, you know, bat-shit insane.”

  Bella nodded absently, scanning the rows of neatly packaged herbs in their little plastic bags. “Your friend really knows what he is doing. He has everything a witch would need, and then some.”

  “Then you can help him?” Max realized he’d resumed his awful habit of stepping nervously from side to side, something he thought he’d had under control years ago. He commanded his feet to stay in place.

  “I hope so. Some mullein leaf should keep whatever that other being is at bay. I’ll give him valerian to induce sleep, and…” She traced down a column of herbs until her eyes widened at the sight of what she was looking for. “Catnip.”

  Max made a face. He didn’t go in for most of this hippie, herbal remedy hoo-ha. “Catnip? Shall I fetch him a piece of string to play with, too?”

  “You will be pleased to hear that I myself am not fond of it.” She faced him, tiny plastic envelopes of herbs clutched in her hands. “But it is a calmative plant. Hopefully, these can do their jobs.”

  There were at least a hundred different dried herbs on the wall, not to mention whatever the bottles and vials on the shelves lining the cramped space contained. “Don’t you need some more? Like this stuff—what does this do?”

  She took the bottle he offered and squinted at the label. “That is oil of orris root. You could use it for a love spell, but I will not help you.”

  Quickly, he put the bottle back. “Very funny.”

  “I am only using one for each purpose. These plants, though they are dead and dried, still have a very personal energy. Imagine if I asked you to come to a party to perform magic tricks—”

  “Never gonna happen.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Just imagine. Then I asked three other people to come and perform the same trick, because I thought you might not get the job done on your own. Would you not be insulted?”

  “I suppose so. If I was some fruity magician. I might just swish my cape and go home.” He laughed. It felt good to joke, to ease some of the tension of the night.

  She apparently agreed, slapping him lightly on the arm. When she raised her hand to do it again, she curved her fingers around his biceps instead.

  The thought of wrecking Nathan’s herb closet in a fit of passion wasn’t as exciting as it should have been. Probably because of her insistence that Max was in love with her. Definitely Fatal Attraction territory there, and he did not want to visit it.

  He brushed her hand away and turned back to the herbs. “Knock it off. We have work to do.”

  “Yes, I do,” she agreed, clearing her throat. “And you should leave me alone to do it.”

  His rejection bothered her, he realized as she walked away. So where was the pride that should have come with that victory?

  And why did he feel like he was the one who’d lost?

  Chapter 20

  Welcome Back, Part Two

  I’d only been gone a week, but when the lights of downtown emerged from the gentle bend of I-96, it seemed I’d been away for years.

  “God help me, I haven’t been away from this stinking place long enough,” Cyrus muttered from the passenger seat.

  “You know, you could sleep. I hear it’s the thing for humans to do at night.” I myself had not gotten enough sleep on the trip. I found myself longing for my bed, only to realize it wasn’t really my bed I wanted to be in.

  A pang of homesickness brought tears to my eyes. I wanted to be lying beside Nathan, inhaling his scent, listening to his blood as it moved through my veins. For a moment, the pain was so intense I nearly screamed my longing like a child having a temper fit.

  I needed Nathan. I loved Nathan. Everyone knew it but him.

  “Are you all right?”

  I still hadn’t adjusted to the new Cyrus, so it took me a moment to realize there was
n’t a hidden trap in his words. I wiped my eyes and nodded. “I’m fine. I’m just very tired.”

  “You could have let me drive. I would have picked up speed. When I was more comfortable.” He paused to look out the window. “My God. Nothing has changed.”

  “Well, the bus schedule changed. And they finished the bigger YMCA since you…died.” I pointed toward the south side of town. “I’d show you, but I’d rather get home before I burn to a crisp.”

  He nodded. “I don’t mean to sound crass, but what exactly am I going to do here?”

  Signaling to change lanes, I shifted into the exit that swooped smoothly down to the heart of town. “I haven’t figured that out yet. You can stay with us for a while.”

  “I don’t think Nolen will be happy about that.” Cyrus sounded almost apologetic. Probably because he didn’t want to sleep in the van again.

  “Nathan is currently indisposed to object to anything. But I’m not asking you to stay as a guest. You have to stay with us because I don’t want your father getting ahold of you.” I sent him a pointed glance. “And I don’t want you trying to find him, either.”

  He gave a mock salute. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I don’t want to fight with you about this, Cyrus.” It still stung to say his name.

  He frowned. “Don’t flinch. It’s not like I stabbed you in your heart or anything. I’m human now. You have nothing to fear from me.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but his deep sigh cut me off.

  “I do want to find my father. But not for the reasons you suspect.”

  Pushing down a huge lump of fear, I tried to sound chipper. “Well, maybe I’ve misjudged you.”

  He looked at me with unwavering accusation in his eyes. “You’ve never done anything but.”

  I let his comment pass—there must have been a gas leak rendering him high and a complete amnesiac to say something so profoundly stupid—and we rode the rest of the way in silence.

  But I couldn’t quiet my mind as we neared the apartment. I had to forcibly remind myself that this wasn’t a joyous homecoming. Our ordeal was far from over, and I had no idea what I was going to find when we arrived. By the time I pulled up to the curb in front of the building, I could barely keep the image of Linda Blair’s spinning head from my mind.