by Anna Abner
“Oh God. Oh God,” panted the black man. “I didn’t mean it.”
Both spirits glowed a deep blood red. With a sickening wheeze, they were both sacrificed to the demon they’d helped summon.
And that could only mean one thing.
Becca stood in the doorway fully conscious. The demon’s shadow was no longer around her head and shoulders. No, it was inside her.
Holden’s mouth dried to dust. No. No, please, no.
She examined her outstretched arms as if she’d never seen human flesh before.
“It’s a beautiful body.” It was Becca’s voice, but it sure wasn’t her talking. “You like it, don’t you?” An evil smile lit her face as she ran her hands up her belly to cup her breasts. “I’m going to have so much fun.” The laugh that erupted from her chest was definitely not Becca’s.
Too late. Too late.
With both hands and feet, he broke all of Derek’s spell circles. But it wasn’t enough. Not by a long shot.
With a penknife, he cut Derek’s arm, drawing blood. Holding his breath, Holden spread Derek’s blood across his palm and stamped a sloppy red handprint over Holden’s mouth and nose. He would seal the summoned demon inside himself with the dark necromancer’s own blood.
Holden removed his shirt, revealing his secret weapon. He’d cut spell circles into his body—on his chest, up and down his arms, and across his thighs and calves, making his body the biggest, baddest conduit of spiritual power in the game.
“Help me,” he called to the growing crowd of ghosts. “Give me your strength, and I’ll end this. I know how.”
He knelt and cast a spell. A huge one. The worst he’d ever tried. Spirits, both friendly and not so friendly, gathered around him to assist, drawn by the sudden burst of power.
Becca, or the demon inside her, watched with amused eyes, as if predicting Holden couldn’t pull it off. But the son of a bitch demon didn’t know how badly Holden needed this spell to work.
Power, like a firestorm, tore through him. With the final word a mini explosion went off, erupting from Holden’s bleeding wounds and blinding him with white light.
“Rebecca!” He reached for her, but the light faded into complete blackness, and he couldn’t find her before he collapsed face-first.
* * *
Becca sat up, blinded by smoke. She rubbed her eyes. Oh, God, she could see. And hear. And feel again. Relief washed over her. For a moment she’d faced the idea that she was doomed to die—helpless and possessed by a demon.
She blinked several times to find a horror movie come to life all around her. Among the smoke and ash, Derek lay on his side, unconscious. Supernatural symbols and spell marks—some familiar, some not—were scrawled on every surface. Blood smeared the concrete floor. And Holden was gone.
“Get up, girl, you have to hurry.”
Becca met a pair of worried blue eyes in a soft, pretty face. Becca recognized her from the photos in Holden’s house.
“It can’t be,” she breathed. If she was seeing Grams, and Holden was missing in action, did it mean—
Her insides wrenched. “Where is Holden?”
Other spirits came into focus. They stood shoulder to shoulder around the perimeter of the cramped closet like a hazy ghostly choir. Was this what Holden saw all the time? She shook her head, hoping it would all disappear. But it didn’t. The shadows stared at her, watching and expectant.
“You can see me because you’ve been touched, girl. The demon possessed you, but now it’s in Holden and I need you to get up and help him.”
It took a good three seconds to form a coherent thought. Her gaze bounced from the face of a teenage boy to the grown, bearded man beside him. Dead, both of them.
The demon had possessed her? Oh, God. And it was in Holden?
“Get up!” Grams’s entire being vibrated with frustration. “Help him!”
Becca climbed to her feet. The fatigue that had haunted her for the past three months faded. Her headache was gone.
“What about—?” She gestured at Derek. If he wasn’t completely subdued, he could hurt her again. Or Holden.
Grams reappeared in front of her. “My grandson.” Her voice stuttered like the connection right before a dropped call. “Is in trouble. If he gets away, there’s no telling what pain and anguish he will cause. Girl, there’s a school half a mile away.”
Becca rushed from the closet—God, it was tiny—and out of the house. She ran for the Jeep, hopped in, and revved the engine. She pressed the gas all the way to the floorboard to catch Holden before he hit the main road in Derek’s sedan.
She closed in on his rear bumper. “What am I going to do when I catch him?” she shouted into the wind and the whine of the engine.
Grams appeared in the seat beside her. She didn’t have to raise her voice to be heard clearly. “Run him off the road.”
Becca didn’t hesitate. She pushed the Jeep parallel to the sedan, made eye contact with Holden, and then swerved hard to the right. Metal screamed. She went rigid as the sedan skidded and swerved. In the rearview mirror, Becca watched it fly through the ditch and crash head-on into a pine tree.
She stomped on the brakes and ran for the crumpled sedan. Thank God, the air bag had gone off, and as she neared, Holden climbed out of the car on his own. But he was covered with blood and consumed by a filthy black shadow. The demon.
“Holden!”
It wasn’t the Holden she knew looking back. Nope. Nothing about that expression was his.
She halted three feet away. “Honey?”
He limped around her like she wasn’t there and trudged toward Highway 24.
“He’s got a stun gun in the back of the Jeep,” Grams said as if it were the most normal thing in the world. “Hit him with it.”
Becca stared at her. “Okay. Sure.” She lifted the tarp in the back of the Jeep and found a duffel with, no joking, half a dozen different stun guns inside.
“What was he thinking?” she hissed. Then she put it together. Her demon was obsessed with electricity. Maybe an electrical charge would expel it back to the demon realm. This must be Holden and Cole’s plan B.
Becca grabbed a stun gun, caught up to Holden, and fired it at his back. Holden made a strangled, pained cry and collapsed at her feet.
“Holden?” She knelt beside him and laid a hand on his shoulder. Oh God, his wounds were symmetrical. He’d carved magical symbols into his own skin. He’d turned his body into a living, breathing spell circle. “Honey?”
Grams appeared near Holden’s head, her spirit shimmery and insubstantial. “Rebecca, we only have a few minutes. Listen carefully. You have to draw a spell circle and mark it with--”
“What?” The shadow enveloping Holden darkened from gunmetal gray to asphalt black. “I don’t understand. I’m not a necromancer.”
“You’ve been touched,” Grams said again. “You can direct my power into him and cast the spell he was planning.”
“I’ll call Cole. He’ll help.”
“There isn’t time!”
Becca reached out and ran her fingers over one of the symbols Holden had cut into his flesh. For her. To save her.
She hadn’t realized how lost she’d been until she’d met Holden and felt cherished for the first time in a long time. The thought of losing him tore a hole through her chest. She owed him too much to let things end this way—in the dirt on the side of a road.
If she didn’t do this, if she failed, he was gone forever. His soul and his personality would be gone from her and a chaos hungry demon would take over. Maybe forever.
She had no choice. “Tell me what to do.”
“Draw the circle. Quick. He’s waking up.”
Sure enough, Holden pushed to his hands and knees but then tumbled back onto his belly. The effects of the stun gun hadn’t completely worn off yet.
Her hands rattled like a set of keys, and she could barely grip the chalk, but Becca drew a wide circle on the edge of the road.
“
Now a bridge,” Grams instructed, her syllables clipped. “Then a globe, scales, and a six pointed star.”
“Okay.” Becca drew the marks, one at each point on the compass, or as near as she could guess at night with only the stars to guide her. “What if this doesn’t work?”
Rebecca saw raw determination in Grams’s eyes. It was a do-or-die kind of look. “It has to.”
Spirits gathered. The ones from the storm shelter—a little girl with pigtails, the teenage boy, and the bearded man.
The girl stepped beside Grams. “We’ll all help.”
Grams gave Rebecca a sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry, but this is going to hurt.”
“What is?”
“Focus your thoughts,” Grams advised. “Concentrate on expelling the darkness in him.”
“I don’t know Latin,” Becca reminded her.
“You don’t have to say anything. Holden cut the spell into his skin.”
This magic and necromancy stuff was Holden’s thing. Rebecca might have been possessed by Derek’s demon, though she didn’t remember it, but she wasn’t prepared for spirits and spell circles. She handled marketing and contracts and taxi-ing new buyers from property to property. Casting a spell was so far out of her comfort zone, she could no longer even see her comfort zone.
Her gaze fell upon Holden’s still twitching fingers. He would protect her, despite his own fear or pain or doubt, to the very end. He’d pulled a demon into his body for her. There was nothing he wouldn’t do to keep her safe. For him she would be brave.
Becca dropped to her knees inside her circle and stared at Holden’s back, picturing her will like a wash of bright, healing light shining upon him.
“I’m ready.” She held her breath and prepared for the spell to knock her sideways.
A tickle started in her fingers. Not too bad. A little uncomfor--
Power, wild and raw, swept through her, bursting from her chest in arcs of crackling electricity. Becca clutched at her ribs, fearing the force would split her in two. She blinked back hazy tears but kept her eyes open and focused on Holden. I can do this. For him.
His body glowed, spell marks lighting up pink and yellow and orange.
A final pop of light tore from her chest, and the spell finished, leaving the hair on her arms standing at attention. She dropped to her hands and knees, dizzy and disoriented, but she never broke eye contact with Holden, and she witnessed the black shadow inside him vanish like smoke in the wind.
He sat up and dug his fingers into her upper arms, and she saw the familiar man behind his eyes. “Are you okay?” His voice was soft, throaty, and choked with pain. There was a tenseness to his expression, anxiety in each quick gesture.
“Just dizzy.”
“You cast a spell?” he marveled. “A demon banishing spell? Do you know how much power you have to channel to do that?”
“If you hadn’t cut the spell marks into yourself I couldn’t have done it. Don’t you ever do anything so stupid and reckless again.” She yanked him into her arms and squeezed hard. “But you’re safe now, you beautiful lunatic.” She swept his hair off his forehead and kissed him. “It’s all over.”
“That may be the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me. Becca, I love you. I’m in love with you. I want you to know that. And when this is over for good, you and I are taking a vacation.” He smiled sweetly. “A long one.”
“Holden.” Becca’s voice quivered. “A vacation sounds really, really nice.” She leaned in and kissed him, lingering for a moment. “I love you, too.”
He struggled to his feet using the sedan as a crutch.
“Go easy,” she warned.
“I will when I know Derek is taken care of.”
The Jeep started right up, and she sped back to Derek’s house.
“Are you okay?” she asked, “Really?”
He studied her face and then his own reflection in the passenger-side mirror. “The demon’s gone. My spell sent it back where it belongs.”
“Did you kill Derek?” The man had lied to her and put a demon inside her, but she still couldn’t find the desire to murder him. Punish him, definitely. If there was some kind of demon summoners’ prison that would be perfect.
“I took his memories away.”
“How many?”
“All of them.” Holden shrugged. “I didn’t want him to be able to hurt you ever again.”
“That’s good.” She parked the Jeep.
“Stay in the car.” Holden got out with a great amount of care.
“Yeah, right.” Rebecca rounded the crumpled hood and slid under his shoulder. “You’re stuck with me, bub.”
“That’s what I thought you’d say.” They limped carefully into the house and through the last bedroom.
“This is a really small space,” she observed at the threshold of the walk-in closet. “It must have been difficult for you to come back here.”
He dipped his head to her ear. “I’d do anything for you.”
“Thank you.” For so, so much. “Thank you.”
Derek lay among the ruined remnants of his summoning spell where they’d left him. He looked harmless, small even.
“Are we going to leave him here?” Becca asked.
“Too many questions. No.” Holden bent and checked Derek’s pulse. “We’ll put him in his car, and I’ll wake him up. When we get to town, you’ll make an anonymous phone call to the police saying you saw a car accident, and the driver needs help.”
“Will he be okay?”
“I just gave him a clean slate.” Holden met her gaze. “And us, too.”
* * *
“I’m sick of being in this place.” Holden sat up, pulling at his thin blue gown but not finding a comfortable position. It was the damned IV they insisted on sticking in him. That, and the heart leads and the finger clip and the blood pressure cuff were enough to make him want to scream. The ER doctor had already cleared him. His heart was fine. So were his reflexes, blood pressure, pupils, and every other part of him they’d inspected.
“It’s only for a few more minutes.” Rebecca perched on the edge of his bed and squeezed his hand. “They’re filling out the discharge paperwork now.”
She smiled, and her eyes twinkled, twisting his heart in a way that had nothing to do with the jolt it had suffered last night. It was her.
All those years he’d wasted locked in his house when he could have been with this incredible woman… If he’d gotten his ass in gear, he could have met her years ago, and they’d have even more time together. Because he could not get enough.
“And,” Rebecca glanced meaningfully at Grams who sat knitting in a plastic chair near the curtain partition, “you have something to do before we leave.”
She kissed him on the forehead like he was a sick kid. No, not good enough. Gripping the back of her neck, he brought her mouth down onto his, kissing her the way he would always kiss her. With love and passion. Yeah, passion would not be an issue.
She drew away, gasping. “Holden.” She flushed pink, and he debated pulling her into the bed and kissing her again. But she backed out of his reach. “I’ll be at the snack machine.”
At the curtain, Rebecca paused to gaze at Grams. “If I don’t see you again, ma’am, it was a pleasure meeting you.”
Without Rebecca, the room turned cold and quiet. He glanced at the shadow of his grandmother, her long knitting needles clicking as she worked on the never-ending sweater.
She caught him staring, stood, and crossed the room to sit on the edge of his bed. Her weight had no effect on the mattress.
“I like her.”
He chuckled. “Me, too.”
“She’s the right girl for you. I look at you two and I see myself and Grandpa when we were your age.”
“I wouldn’t have ever met her if you hadn’t forced me to track her down.”
Grams nodded. “You’ll make a beautiful toast to me at your wedding.”
“Deal.”
She bowed h
er head, and he was still afraid of what came next. Though he’d been awakened again to life and love and joy, the thought of losing his Grams still hurt.
Her voice was faint, “I’ll stay. If you want me to.”
“No,” Holden rushed to say. “I’m not keeping you here anymore.” He reached for her as if he could grasp her ghostly hand. He couldn’t. “I love you too much to keep you here any longer. Please,” he stressed, “go and be happy. Enjoy your afterlife.”
She stood, her lavender yarn dangling from her fingers. “I love you, you know. I’ve loved you since the day you came into this world and every day since.”
“I love you, too, Grams.” He blinked to clear his vision. “Thank you for looking out for me.”
“You’ll take care of Rebecca?” Grams asked.
“Of course.”
“You’ll take care of Sparky’s?”
“I promise.”
“I’m proud of you, bubba. More than you know.” She smiled bravely. Instead of disappearing, though, a warm light shimmered in her chest and grew until it encompassed her entire being.
Blinded, Holden shielded his eyes.
Poof.
She was gone.
Chapter Twenty
One week later
Rebecca pulled up in front of Holden’s house. Even though in the last week she’d returned her apartment key, closed her office, and been possessed by a demon, she was happy. Gloriously, deliriously happy.
Maybe because of all those things, and a few others, she wasn’t worried about taking care of anyone else right now. She’d called her dad and Nelly and told each of them that she was taking an indefinite sabbatical from work and moving out of her apartment. She had no doubts they’d be fine without her mothering them for a while.
Popping the hood of her Lexus, she struggled to lift out two oversized wheeled suitcases and two shoulder bags. With the bags crisscrossed over her chest, she rolled the suitcases up to Holden’s front door and rang the bell. From somewhere deep in the house, Buster barked.