6 Under The Final Moon

by Hannah Jayne

  “Did you notice anything different about her? Hooves, scales, face on the back of her head?”

  I cocked an eyebrow. “Do you think I wouldn’t have noticed any of that? She looked normal. Completely normal.”

  “Except that she is the owner of a Hell hound.”

  “We don’t know that for sure. It’s just a hunch.” I picked up another patty and swung it. “Hell dog! Come on, Hell dog! Uncle Will wants to wrestle with you!” I chucked the thing and heard the sickening slap as it hit the hard-packed dirt. “I don’t even know what we’re doing out here. If the dog comes after us, we’re going to be running away from it.”

  “You might be running away.”

  “Either way, we won’t be able to follow it anywhere.”

  “Maybe it has a collar.”

  I shot Will a look.

  “It’s worth a shot. He’s got three necks to wear it on.”

  We stepped out of the car. I took a huge gulp of the sea-tinged air, loving the way it chilled my lungs the whole way down. If we weren’t on the hunt for some sort of underworld demon, it would qualify as a perfectly pleasant night.

  “Let’s try down by the dog park. We can just retrace your steps. Maybe poochie is still around.”

  Though the cars shot by with blinding headlights and lights were on at the gas station, stores, and homes lining the park, the park itself rested in a tiny pocket of darkness. The surrounding lights just shadowed the mature trees, making them look ominous and menacing. I tightened my windbreaker and tossed a veggie patty in front of us.

  “Here doggy, doggy.”

  We waited in silence, me standing there with my plate of burgers, Will with arms crossed in front of his chest.

  “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”

  I tossed the last burger. “You think?”

  A car horn wailed in the distance, but once it stopped, we both heard it—the shifting sound of feet pushing through the dried leaves on the ground. Will grabbed me by the elbow and we crouched down, hiding behind a thick bush.

  I couldn’t see anything immediately, but there was definitely someone—or something—moving through the brush. The footfalls were measured, deliberate.

  “That’s not a dog,” I whispered to Will.

  He pressed his index finger in front of his lips, then mouthed, Wait. I did, while he slowly rose to his full height and crept, silently, away from the bush.

  I’ve never been good at doing what I was told or keeping myself out of harm’s way, but this time, I really wish I would have. Will was a half step in front of me when I heard the slice of knife through air. There was a shriek and something heavy bowled into me. I hit the ground in slow motion, hearing the crunch of every bone as my body made contact with the earth. My lungs seemed to constrict and fold in on themselves, and I was desperate for breath, my lips feeling chapped and huge as I sucked frantically, unable to breathe.

  My head hit the hard-packed dirt last and stars shot in front of my eyes. Electricity burned through me, and the city sounds were drowned out, replaced by a frenzied buzzing in my ears, a din so sharp it rattled through my teeth.

  “Will!” I was finally able to eke out his name, but he didn’t answer me. I clawed at the ground, ignoring the screaming pain in my body, pressing myself to turn, to try my best to crawl toward where Will was.

  I saw the man in front of Will. He was dressed all in black, but there was something about his clothes, something that didn’t look right. He didn’t look like an average city thug.

  He and Will were equally matched in height and weight, but the man jabbed at Will with a long, slick blade that reflected the pale light of the moon.

  Definitely not an average city thug.

  “Will!” My voice had gained strength. The attacker’s attention snapped away from Will and he focused on me as if just realizing I was there. He was wearing a black mask that went down past his nose, his eyes piercing and sharp behind the two narrowed slits in the mask. His lips curled up into a grotesque smile that shot ice water down my spine.

  “You.” It was a growl more than a word and suddenly the man was lunging toward me. It all happened in painfully slow motion: his arm reaching out, his fisted hand gathering the fabric at my chest—the way he lifted me as if I didn’t weigh a thing. I blinked and he slammed me up against a tree, the back of my head snapping against the rough bark. Leaves shimmied down all around us as though we were happy picnickers and not strangers in the midst of the fight of our lives.

  I kicked out and made contact, my left foot getting him right in the abdomen. It seemed to surprise him for a half second, just long enough for me to reach forward and scratch at the man’s eyes.

  I saw Will come up behind him, his arm snaking around the man’s neck. What happened next I will never be able to forget, the blazing, bloody millisecond etched in my brain forever: Will’s grip tightened. The man let me go. I saw his hand go for his jacket. I saw it disappear. I saw it reemerge, saw the paper-thin edge of a dagger as he turned and sliced Will across the gut.

  “Will!”

  I crumbled to my knees, crawling through the dirt toward him. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I knew the sticky wetness that was pooling around my fingers was blood—Will’s blood—but I refused to let myself think about it. I vaguely heard the sound of leaves crunching and then the thud of footsteps as the masked man ran away.

  “Will! Will!” I said, crawling up next to him.

  He looked uncomfortably calm, his complexion waxy. “Sophie,” he whispered.

  “I’m here, Will. I’m here.”

  “I need you.”

  I felt the tears pouring in heavy sheets over my cheeks. “I’m here, Will. I’m here for you.”

  He took a long, shuddering breath and a tiny triangle of pink tongue darted out of his mouth. He winced, then stared up at the moon.

  “No, Will, no.” I swung my head. “Stay here. You can’t die. You cannot die! I can’t do this alone—I can’t do this without you! You’re going to be fine. You’re going to be fine.”

  My eyes immediately went to where his hands were, pressed against his belly. His fingers were slick with blood, and I felt the bile burn up the back of my throat. “Oh, Will.”

  “Cell phone.”

  “Yes!” I was digging around for my phone when I heard the sirens. A police car was fronting a fire truck and an ambulance, tearing down the street in our direction. The colored lights flashing on the darkened buildings around us was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen and I flew to my feet, jumping up and down, flagging them down.

  “Hey.”

  I went back down to my knees. “Will, they’re on their way. The police, and an ambulance. You’re going to be okay.”

  “I know.” He shifted and gave a little cough that exposed his teeth. They were bathed in blood and I looked away, winced. “It’ll take a hell of a lot more than a little stab to take me out.”

  I nodded, wanting to laugh, but this was no “little stab.” The cut went from the bottom of Will’s right rib in a perfect slice to his right hip. The blade made a clean cut through his T-shirt, through his skin and layers of flesh. More blood, so dark in the moonlight that it looked black, pulsed from the wound each time Will took a breath—each time his heart pounded.

  I blinked back tears as he pressed against his gut, his blood covering his hands and digging into his fingernails. He rasped.

  “Will,” I said. “Oh, Will.”

  “I need you to take this. Hide it.” Slowly, painfully, he rolled up on one side, exposing a dagger with a weird, rounded blade.

  “Is that what—I didn’t see—”

  The weapon that I had seen sink into Will had looked like a normal dagger. Straight blade. Plain, utilitarian hilt. Nothing stand-out about it. This knife that Will was trying to press into my hands was elbow-to-wrist in size, with that strange, curved blade.

  “Where did this come from? The blade that got you was—”

  “I know. I
pulled this from his belt before I went down.”

  Close up, I could see that there was something etched on the blade, tiny symbols carved in a swirl from tip to hilt. The gold continued to the quillon, which rolled up, their edges seemingly as sharp as the blade. At the base of the hilt was a cross, also done in gold. I stared down at it. Looking down at the knife in my hand the cross was right side up, but if I were to point the blade down, the cross was upside down.

  “An upside-down cross,” I whispered, feeling my stomach shift. “Evil. Satan—”

  Will wagged his head, a nearly imperceptible move from side to side. His voice was barely a whisper. “Bring it to Alex.”

  “Is it yours?”

  Will worked hard to focus on me. “Hide it until you can get it to Alex. You have to bring it to him. He’ll know what to do with it.”

  I edged the knife away and slid the cold, dirty blade underneath my sweatshirt. I knew that if Will was suggesting I do anything with Alex, then this knife was something big—something huge. On a normal basis, Will and Alex wouldn’t share a bagel, let alone the weapon of a—I felt the sob choking in my throat—possible murderer.

  After the paramedics loaded Will into the ambulance—and he gripped my hand, reminding me that I had to go find Alex—I jogged back to my apartment, clutching the dagger in my rolled up sweatshirt. My T-shirt was sweat soaked and my teeth were chattering; by the time I made it home I was certain I smelled like veggie burgers and despair.

  Nina sat bolt upright when I walked in. “I take it you found your Hell hound.”

  “No.” All I could do was swing my head. My lips felt chapped, my throat bone dry. Nina handed me a glass of water, and I drank gratefully, then pushed my bundled sweatshirt onto the table.

  Vlad looked up from his laptop, gesturing toward the sweatshirt with his chin. “What’s that?” His nostril flicked. “And whose blood?”

  I looked down at my hands and my breath caught. I hadn’t realized that I was covered in Will’s blood. I started to sob. “It’s Will’s. Oh, God, Nina, someone attacked Will. He was stabbed!” I fell against my best friend and cried until I started to hiccup.

  Nina held on to me, awkwardly patting my back and rhythmically murmuring, “There, there.” She let me gather myself together before she dragged me down to a chair and gaped. “What do you mean someone stabbed Will?”

  I sucked in a deep, steadying breath. “Someone attacked us while we were out looking for the dog. Will saved me, but the guy, the guy—” A wave of nausea roiled through me. “The guy stabbed him.”

  “Is he okay?” She sprang up from her chair. “What are we doing here? We need to go to the hospital.”

  I took Nina’s hand. “No, he told me not to. He told me—”

  “To bring this to Alex?” I hadn’t noticed that Vlad had deserted his spot at the table and unwrapped the dagger from my sweatshirt. He was holding it just inches from his face, seemingly mesmerized by the thin, sharp blade.

  “How did you know that?” I asked.

  He turned the dagger over and over in his pale hands, fingering the fine etchings in the handle. “Because it’s the sword of the Grigori.”

  Nina and I glanced at each other, blank faced, and then at Vlad.

  “Who is the Grigori?”

  “Not who,” Vlad said, leaning over his laptop, his fingers flying over the keys. “What.”

  He turned the laptop to face us, and Nina and I leaned over, nearly cheek to cheek—mine hot, hers ice cold.

  “The Watchers,” I whispered, fascinated. “So they’re not exactly fallen angels.”

  “But they are evil,” Vlad said.

  “Evil? It says right here they taught their human counterparts how to make metal weapons and cosmetics. The race that created MAC can’t be all bad.” Nina batted her heavily mascarra’d lashes.

  “I don’t get it,” I said, pushing the laptop closed. “Why would the Grigori be after Will?”

  “They’re not after Will, Sophie. They’re after you.”

  There was something in the way Vlad said it, his voice edged with a severe finality, that made a fist of terror grip my heart.

  “Because I’m the Vessel.”

  Vlad nodded.

  “So, the fallen angels want to kill me and now so do the Grigori.” I opened the laptop up again, in a panic, and began reading. Finally, I pointed, my body breaking out in a cold sweat. “There! There! It says there was a flood and they were all wiped out. Right? So maybe all but that guy. Or, or, maybe he’s not even really one of them, maybe he just got the sword, you know, at a garage sale. And this is all a huge, funny coincidence that we’ll laugh about. Ha, ha, ha.” I forced a loud, high-pitched laugh that came out sounding more psychotic than confident. “Right?”

  “There were two hundred original Grigori. Some of them mated with human women and created the Nephilim, but some of them didn’t. They were left to walk ‘the Valleys of the Earth’”—Vlad made air quotes—“until Judgment Day.”

  “But if they were cast out of Heaven and made to wander around . . .” Nina began.

  “They were ripe for the picking. They turned even darker. They want the Vessel of Souls for themselves,” I said.

  “Or for the person they’re working for.”

  I sat down with a hard thump. “Let me guess. For Satan? Dear old dad strikes again.”

  I wanted to hyperventilate. I wanted to scream. I wanted to gut myself and dig out whatever the hell the Vessel of Souls was with a soup spoon and pass it off to anyone who wanted it, anyone who could guarantee that Will would make it home alive.

  “I have to call the hospital.”

  I slammed the door to my bedroom and dialed the hospital, then paced while they put me on hold. The computer voice told me that my call was important, and would be answered in three minutes. And maybe it was—but every second that passed dragged on and on and I was growing more certain that Will was splayed out on some emergency room table, dying.

  “Screw this.”

  I grabbed my jacket and the Grigori dagger and cut through the living room.

  “Where are you going?” Nina wanted to know.

  “I’m going to check on Will. Then I’m going to take out what’s left of the goddamned Grigori.”

  SIX

  I must have driven with blinders on because I made it to the hospital in record time. I don’t know if I stopped for any lights or, hell, if I even stayed on the road, but me and my car made it in once piece so I considered that a plus. I dialed my phone as I crossed the parking lot.

  “Grace?”

  “Alex? It’s me. You need to come down to San Francisco General right now.”

  “Lawson?” His voice grew tight. “Are you okay?”

  “It’s the Grigori.”

  Alex was silent for a long beat before he breathed out an almost disbelieving, “Shit.” Then, “I’m on my way.”

  A stout nurse with her lips set in a deep frown led me into Will’s room. The curtains were drawn and only a pale light above the bed was on, giving Will a terrifyingly corpse-like look.

  “You’ve only got ten minutes,” Nurse Frown said. “Ten minutes.”

  I could see Will’s eyes moving behind his lids. Then his eyelashes fluttered delicately and my whole body tensed. He looked so incredibly fragile—every inch of him, even the ones that weren’t covered in bandages or hooked up to tubes. His breath was a steady in-out, his chest rising and falling, but every second I expected it to stop, expected the sick joke that had been this night to continue on and steal Will away from me.

  “Will?” I whispered.

  His lips broke. “Soph?” His voice was soft and hoarse, something akin to a whisper, and it broke my heart.

  “Oh, God, Will, are you okay? How are you?”

  “Been better.” He smiled, then winced.

  “Don’t try and move. Just—did they say—did they—”

  He opened his eyes and blinked at me. “Did they say that I should start sa
ying my good-byes? Nah. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

  I let out the breath I hadn’t known I was holding, and the tears rushed over my cheeks. “Will, I’m so sorry—this whole thing is my fault! If I hadn’t made you come look for Cerberus—” I fisted my hands, feeling the tight skin of my palm split as my fingernails dug in. “If you hadn’t met me, none of this would ever have happened!”

  “It happens, love. I’m your Guardian. This”—he gestured vaguely to the enormous bandage strapped over his stomach and chest—“is part of the job.”

  “It’s because of me!”

  “Yes, of course it is.”

  I stopped crying abruptly. “That’s a terrible thing to say.”

  “I’m just agreeing with you.”

  “If you weren’t my Guardian . . .”

  “But I am.”

  He edged his hand out of the blankets and gripped me by the wrist. His eyes, his face—everything—went deeply serious. “Did you get the dagger to Alex?”

  I reached for my shoulder bag and pulled the thing out. “This?”

  “Good Lord, love, put that back. Don’t they have security around here?”

  “Not as much as you’d think. I know about the sword, Will. I know about the Grigori.”

  I waited for him to reel back in stunned amazement. Or to hang his head, ashamed that I had uncovered the secret of the warriors he was guarding me from.

  “That’s good. With me out”—again, he tried to move, his breath coming in shallow huffs—“for a bit, you’re an even bigger target.”

  There was a soft knock on the door, and then Alex poked his head in. I was about to say something when I noticed Nurse Frown coming in on his heels. “You’ve got two minutes.” She jerked her chin toward Will. “He needs his rest.”

  She shot withering glances, first one to me, then one to Alex, before stomping out the door.

  Alex’s gaze swept to Will. A slight flicker of emotion went through his eyes and my heart broke a little more.

  “Tell me what you know about the Grigori,” Alex said.

  Will opened his mouth and I stepped forward, placing a hand gently over the bandage on his chest. “You don’t talk. Rest.”