She shrugged. “Halfway is better than nothing. My Herald is helping to bring me forth. Soon, I will know myself in your world. I will bring myself to the light.”
Maya screamed. I flashed the light at her. She fought off some kind of force, but it was invisible. It was only in her mind.
I glared at Karen Bell. “You’re not physical right now, are you? You’re only in my mind…”
“I am any way you want me, baby,” she said with a warm smile. “I can feel you. Can you feel me?”
“This is only happening in my mind. You have no form. This isn’t real.”
“It’s real to me,” she said, stretching out her arms. She peered at the ceiling as if basking in the outdoor sun. “I bathe in the glorious fluid nature of your being. I swim through your essence until a small primordial spark of me manifests in your realm. I find your world intoxicating, Solomon. I want more. I want to know myself as you do. I wish to simply BE.”
Words like ‘being’ and ‘essence’ piqued my curiosity. Was she talking about the darkness… or something more?
If she was only in my mind, then my mind made her real. I felt her warm touch, her heated breath. She was swimming through my being. My essence. This ‘fluid nature’ wasn’t the darkness at all—
It was my mind.
“Consciousness,” I said. “You’re swimming through my consciousness right now…”
“I don’t like to nitpick over terminology. Your vocabulary in this realm is so limiting.”
“This is how you’ve been infecting people down here,” I said, turning my flashlight back to Maya. “Not by physically implanting eggs that grow inside them, but by infecting their mind.”
Karen Bell’s eyes were wide with glee. Like she was high. Or turned on.
She peered at me with longing in her eyes. “You may be the only person in this existence to understand me, Solomon,” she said. Her smile was wide and bright.
“You’re swimming through their mind and implanting creatures through the back door of their psyche.” I ground my teeth. “You’re infecting their soul.”
Under a slithering shadow, Karen morphed into Serena. “You certainly know how to take the magic out of the moment, don’t you?” she said. “What a fuddy-duddy.”
“You haven’t infected me yet. Because you can’t, can you?”
Serena kicked the dirt. Like she was pouting. “I could if I really wanted to…”
“No, you can’t. Because I know you’re an impostor. That’s how it works, isn’t it? Your victims have to believe the illusion is real. But I’m not buying your bullshit.”
“You need to have a little bit of acceptance, yes. But I’ve learned a lot in my short time here. Humans have these wonderful things called emotions. Emotions do a lot of things. They make you strong. They make you weak. They loosen locks. They open doors.” Serena’s eyes sparkled. “Oh, Solomon, won’t you let me in?”
“You’re a parasite,” I said. “You feed on people’s weaknesses. Their emotional vulnerabilities. Appearing to them as past loved ones. And all the regrets that come with them. You break down their walls until they accept you, not really knowing what you are. You plant your seed.”
“And then I evolve inside them,” she said, holding her arms around her belly like she was pregnant, rocking back and forth. “And we become one.”
“The Primitives…”
“Don’t you want to be part of our family?” she asked, sensually touching her lips.
I pushed past her. “Fuck off.” I marched over to Maya. She was shivering on the ground, rubbing her arms together like she was freezing. But strangely, the air was extremely warm down here. And she was sweating.
I grabbed her face and looked into her eyes. They were open, but she didn’t see me. Her pupils twitched back and forth. Her breaths were shallow, like they were her last. Her hands trembled something fierce.
The last time I saw symptoms like this was when I was a pastor over three decades ago. I saved the life of a junkie heroin user. The side effects were the same. It was like Maya was having withdrawal symptoms and was jonesing for a fix.
“Maya,” I said, snapping my fingers in front of her face. “Snap out of it.” I slapped her cheek. She still didn’t respond.
The Serena mimic crouched down beside her. “I gotta tell you, Sol, the kid looks like a goner.”
I avoided her smirking face. “Shut your pie hole.”
“Her life is fading. My life, however,” she said, placing her hand over Maya’s stomach, “is just beginning.”
Maya fidgeted in her trance. She was dreaming, reacting to something that wasn’t there. She mumbled about her parents. I couldn’t make out the words, and I didn’t need to. These were private Hells meant for her alone.
I just had to get her to come to her senses. Somehow.
Even if I could wake her up, I had no idea how to get out of these caverns. I stood and looked at my surroundings.
It was a vast area of darkness. Even with my flashlight, visibility was extremely limited. The rocky walls held glints of quartz and crystal that helped reflect the light from the flashlight. For all the good it did.
Several caves lay ahead of me. Any one of them could lead out of here. Or lead me infinitely deeper into the dark.
It was possible I could climb back up the pit where we fell. With Maya on my back. But the rocky walls were wet. It must’ve rained recently. Which would make it difficult, if not impossible to make it to the surface before she hatched a Primitive from her chest.
With no other way out, I closed my eyes and ground my teeth.
“Goddammit.”
I was going to have to use magic.
I hated relying on magic. I already used it with the protection spell around Maya at the tree. If I performed magic again, twice in one day?
That was going to piss me the hell off.
It’s very easy for magic to become an addiction. Look at Serena. Not this fake Serena, the real one. She uses magic like cocaine. She’s addicted to the thrill and power of it.
Black magic. Dark magic. Blood magic. She loves it all. And even worse, she’s a natural. She intuitively knows combinations of spells that would work, spells that would normally take people years to perfect. After a few tries, she figures it out. Magic is in her blood. Just like her father.
She was difficult enough as a child, but the more her power grew over the years, the harder it was to tolerate her. And now she’s completely unbearable ninety-nine percent of the time.
She’s a sociopath with the power of the gods. And the will to use it. That’s what magic does. It corrupts your soul.
So yes, it pissed me off to no end to resort to using magic, even a little.
I had to get Maya to the surface. Fast. If The Presence was laying eggs in her soul, we were running out of time.
I crouched down and shined my light on her. She tensed up and screamed.
“What’s wrong, Maya?”
“It burns,” she yelled. She held her stomach.
I pulled up her shirt to examine her abdomen. Something moved under her skin. Something squirmed.
“Goddammit. The creature is already growing inside you”.
Serena laughed. “Awww, do I have a bun in the oven? Want to see how it plays out when I eat her insides? She’s young and ripe. She’s going to be sooo delicious.”
I shoved Serena back. “Get the hell away from me, whatever you are.” I pulled out the butterfly knife as it danced between my fingers. “Come near me again and I’ll cut off your goddamn head.”
She shivered in a mocking way. “Oooh, that sounds like a good ol’ time to me, daddy.”
“Take it out,” I said. “Whatever you put in her. Your bullshit monster seed. Take it out, now.”
“Why would I do that? She’s a shell. My precious little egg…”
“She’s too small for your creatures to fit.”
“No, I think she’s just right. Even a being such as I have runts of the
litter.”
I pulled out my last vial of healing agent from my jacket. Snapped it into the syringe, which was, thankfully, still in one piece. I crouched down to inject Maya, but the Serena mimic snatched it from my hand.
When I turned around, it was no longer Serena. It was an old enemy.
Quentin Kane.
“You don’t want to use this thing on her, do you?” Quentin said. “Are you really going to fuck this up for me?”
Quentin was a seven-foot tall Forever asshole who tried to become God and take over the world. Up until this moment, he was a dead, distant memory.
“Give it back,” I said. I got to my feet and stuck the blade into Quentin’s gut, slicing across his abdomen. I expected guts to come spilling out, but there weren’t any. There was no blood. Quentin merely laughed.
“You’re a waste of space,” he said. He took a few steps back and dangled the syringe over the cliff. “The way I see it,” he said, “without this, you can’t save the girl. Without this, you’re nothing. Without this, you’re only human. Your precious Forever Blood.”
I huffed. “Give it to me. Or I will end you.”
“You think you will always win because there is nothing you’re not willing to lose. It’s a trait I respect. But there’s one thing you need to know, Solomon Ivy. It doesn’t always matter how hard you try or what you’re willing to sacrifice.”
I reached out, palm up. “Give me the syringe—”
“Sometimes, nothing you do matters.”
“Don’t do this. Please.”
“You win some, you lose some.” He dropped the syringe off the cliff.
“No—” I dived for it, but it bounced off the tip of my fingers and shattered on the rocky cliff. The serum was gone.
Nothing could save Maya now.
Chapter 20
Delirious Confessions
Maya shivered at my feet, impregnated with the seed of a dark entity. With my last vile of Forever Blood shattered on the rocks below, I had no sure way of saving her from her horrifying fate.
Near the edge of the cliff, I glared at the creature who took the shape of Quentin. The beast was proud of himself for dropping the vial and destroying any chance of saving Maya.
Somehow, the creature entered into its victims through their minds, psychically breaching through illusions of people they loved. That’s why she was reacting to her parents.
But the monster’s tactic didn’t work on me. Why not? My guess was there had to be some measure of belief from the victim, a high level of emotion, for the dark entity to slip through in order to impregnate the body with its spawn.
That’s how it got Maya.
My mind raced with possible solutions to save her. Or put her out of her misery before the Primitive creature hatched inside her, ate her organs, and broke free from her chest. As far as saving her, my mind came up with zilch. As far as ending her, I was fully prepared for what I needed to do.
I ground my teeth and growled at the Quentin beast. “Go away,” I said.
“Oh, that’s your scary voice,” Quentin said. “I guess I should leave now, huh?”
On pure instinct, I laid waste to his face, my fist driving through his cheek and jaw. The beast felt human enough, but I knew better. My second blow destroyed his nose. The third obliterated his eye socket.
A wet blanket of blood covered his face, making him unrecognizable. But he was laughing.
“You can’t kill me,” he said with a taunting smile. “What are you going to do now?”
I grabbed his collar and threw him off the edge of the cliff. I moved to the ledge and shined my flashlight down, watching him fall down into the abyss.
Good riddance.
Someone was behind me. I spun around. It was a weathered man with a thick white mustache. A good ol’ cowboy. My friend and fellow hunter, Jack Byrne.
“Now you know, boy, that pushing me off a cliff ain’t gonna do jack squat to get rid of me.” His eyes dropped to Maya on the ground. She shivered something awful. “There’s nothing you can do for her, son. You know that. You’re just in denial.”
I parked my ass next to Maya, took out my butterfly knife, and sliced the back of my forearm. Blood dripped onto the floor as I sat cross-legged on the floor.
I had to draw enough blood to make a symbol. When enough blood was spilled, I created a sigil on the ground. A symbol of protection.
It was Samarian. Extremely ancient, unbelievably powerful.
When I had grabbed Quentin’s collar to throw him over the ledge, I had ripped off a chunk of fabric. I opened my hand to inspect it. It was no longer a piece of cloth, but a slimy puddle of oil in the palm of my hand.
I let it dribble off my hand into the center of the blood sigil. The protection spell was similar to the one I cast for Maya by the tree. It would ward off the creature so he couldn’t see or hear us. We would be invisible to him.
I whispered to the sigil, chanting in Samarian.
Jack shook his head. “What are you doing, boy? Nothing is going to matter when I’m made flesh. When the Herald opens the gate tonight, it’s game over for you and your kind. Hello to me and mine.”
I said the last words of the chant. The monster faded into ash as a gust of wind blew him into nothingness. The beast was gone.
For the time being.
I was more than a little desperate to have to resort to Blood Magic. And I was rusty. I was lucky that worked at all.
Now that the creature was gone, it was time to do something about Maya; about this thing growing inside her, this egg, this embryo. She was passed out again. I crouched down and felt her midsection. It was slightly extended, like she was bloated. But it was definitely not from too many saucy burritos.
First thing’s first. We needed to reach the surface. I needed a locater spell, something to help lead me the hell out of this dark maze.
I pinched my wounded arm and dripped fresh blood to the ground. I hadn’t attempted this spell in over twenty years. The last time I used it, I was alone, being chased by a group of rabid Forever People. A bad poker night in the supernatural underworld where a Forever screwed me over in order to get in good with the local mob.
Never trust a Forever. It will bite you in the ass every single time.
I painted an Egyptian sigil on the floor. It took me almost a minute to recall the words to the spell. When I got done, it would show me the way to freedom.
I spoke the chant and glanced around, waiting for a sign pointing the way out, like a compass. At this point, I’d accept a random squealing bat as a sign from God.
But nothing came.
My language skills may have been rusty. Maybe I got a word in the chant wrong. When I turned to Maya, she was sitting up.
She smiled with eyes of wonder as she pointed over my shoulder. “Look at the pretty colors…”
I peered in that direction, but it was just darkness. “You’re seeing things again.”
“Bright lights are so cool, man,” she said. “I need to write a poem about them…”
“There are no lights, Maya. There’s nothing there—” I stopped myself, narrowing my eyes in deep thought. “Where do you see the lights leading, Maya?”
“To the cave.”
“Which cave?”
“The middle one.” She swayed back and forth like she was piss drunk. Why could she see the lights when I clearly couldn’t? Somewhere in the spell, I must have screwed up. Either a word was wrong or I didn’t use enough blood. I muttered under my breath.
Maya hugged herself and swayed, her eyes closed like she was lost in reverie.
She was delirious.
Of course. That was the answer.
The reason she could see the spell working was because of her delirium. Her brain was fluctuating between different levels of consciousness, Alpha and Theta levels. Her conscious mind was mostly asleep, so she was able to see a broader spectrum of reality than I currently could.
Which suited me just fine.
&nb
sp; At least she wasn’t crying about her stomach anymore. The protection spell should have halted the transformation inside her body, putting the monster’s brood in a state of suspended animation. Like freezing an egg that was still inside her. But it wouldn’t get rid of it. It just bought me time. Until it wore off. Which could be any minute.
Or I could be wrong and it could still be growing inside her and eating her organs at this very second, but she was too high from the experience to know any better.
I picked her up and traipsed toward the middle cave. It was about a half-mile hike. As I carried her over rocky terrain, she tugged at my shirt.
“I killed a boy,” she said.
She was talking about Marcus, the Forever kid from the campsite.
“He was a monster, Maya.”
“I’m a murderer. I’m the monster.”
“You’re not a monster. Now shut your mouth, girl. I need to focus.” I rounded a sharp corner of the cave, careful not to fall into the void two inches in front of me.
“I’m a fraud. I’m no hunter. I can’t take the pain. It’s balling up inside me. Turning me into something I don’t like…”
“You’ll be fine.” With her in my arms, I was almost to the middle cave.
“What do I do with these feelings?”
“Bury them,” I said. “Like a dead body you don’t want coming back.”
She tugged my shirt again. “I can’t. I tried. I have to get it out. Or I’m going to explode.”
“Give it up to God,” I said. “Release your burdens on Him.”
“Is that what you do?”
“Hell no,” I said without thinking. “I wouldn’t give Him the satisfaction.” I peeked at her from the corner of my eye. “But that’s just me. I’m an asshole.”
She stared at me and broke out in laughter. “Yeah, you kinda are.”
I smirked. “Do you still see the lights?”
She peered around me into the cave. “All the way down and to the right.”
I hiked another hundred yards. As the cave sloped to the right, a rock turned under my heel. I slipped against the rocky wall. There was no sign of any bright lights. No shimmer of daylight. Not even a scratch of it.
Faith of a Monster Killer: Killing Forever Book 3 Page 11