by Anthology
Just like my stepfather. Just like Rose.
Agitated, I tossed the photo onto the bed, then stood up and moved to the window. I pushed aside the blinds and looked out at the gray buildings that lined the opposite side of the street. Cracked cement steps led up to front doors littered with mailboxes tacked to the siding, and gray paint peeled lazily under the crisp autumn sun.
Sun. Apparently Alice had blackout shades in her bedroom. What I’d thought was predawn was actually late afternoon.
I pressed my head against the cool glass, focusing on the gray facades that faced me. Something solid and permanent and real. Something on which I could ground my undulating emotions. Even that view, though, wasn’t doing the trick. I didn’t know this street, these houses, and a tremor of panic shot through me. I quashed it firmly, hating my cowardice.
Everything I’d been through so far, and this was what was getting to me? A freaking street address?
No. Chill. I drew in a breath, trying to get my head in order. The fungus cream had a pharmacy label, and the address was Boarhurst. Not the Flats—not home—but I knew Boarhurst. Once a small community in and of itself, it had been consumed by Boston like so many other villages, now clinging to their identity as distinct neighborhoods within the Boston sprawl. My various entrepreneurial activities had put me on the T to Boarhurst a couple of times. I didn’t know the place like the back of my hand, but I knew enough to get around.
I let the blinds fall back into place, and darkness once again consumed the room.
I stood there, somewhat calmer now that I at least knew where I was, and I tried to fit the rest of the pieces together. I’d died. That much I knew. And I’d come back. That much had become obvious.
What I didn’t understand, was why.
“Cause you’re our girl,” a voice said. “You’re the girl who can keep the demons from opening the gate. Keep that puppy locked up tight.”
I spun around, my heart pounding, and found myself staring at the mysterious frog-man, a beer in his hand and his fedora slung low over his face.
“Get the hell out of here,” I said, pressing my back against the wall, fear so intense I thought it would shoot out of my fingertips.
“Hey, hey, hey.” He held up his hand in a peacekeeping gesture. “I know you’re scared, but give me a break. I threw my back out lugging you from the limo to this apartment. And then I had to suffer through hours of boredom while you conked out on the bathroom floor. Now that you’re back in the land of the living, I’m hardly going to vamoose now.” He took a step toward me, and I tensed, ready to attack and run if need be. “Come on, kid. You’re gonna hurt my feelings. I ain’t here to hurt you. I’m here to help you.”
“Bite me.” I shot him my best tough-girl glare, slightly less effective considering the Hello Kitty pajamas. “Now, get out of here before I scream my head off.”
The frog-man just grinned. “Call me Clarence, okay? The frog thing isn’t too flattering.”
“Dammit,” I said. “Stay out of my head.” He’d done that number on the street, and I hadn’t liked it any better back then. “And I want answers. Right now. You can start with who you are.”
“Think of me as a human resources professional. I’m here to guide you through your first day on the job.” His forehead scrunched up. “All the days, actually, but first things first.”
“Job? What job? What are you talking about?”
“It’ll come back to you.”
“Humor me, and tell me now.”
“It’s the chance of a lifetime, kid. An opportunity for redemption. A chance to do some real good. To make the world the kind of place it should be. A paradise instead of a cesspool.”
I shivered, suddenly fearful I did understand; my mind simply refused to go there no matter how hard the frog-man pushed.
“Clarence,” he said, creeping me out again by climbing into my head. “And yes. Battle of biblical proportions. The ultimate battle of good against evil. A war that’s been raging for millennia, and still rages today. The kind of thing that would make reality-TV executives drool if only they could get their cameras in on it. But it’s down to the zero hour now. Things are heating up. Bad things. Apocalypse things. And that, Lily, is where you come in.
“Me?” My voice rose with both fear and incredulity. “Are you nuts? What does the Apocalypse have to do with me? And what did you mean, I can make sure the gate stays locked? What gate?”
He moved his hands through the air as if reciting the title of a movie, its name up in lights. “Gate. To. Hell. Eh? Eh? Gets your juices flowing, doesn’t it.”
I blinked. “Gate to hell? Gate to hell?”
“Damn straight, kid. The Ninth Gate opens, and the underworld swarms in. And I’m not talking the trickle of these past millennia, but a full-blown onslaught. There’s an army gathering on the other side, all set to come through when the dimensions line up.”
My head was spinning. “Dimensions? What are you talking about?”
“You think demons can cross over any old time? They can’t. That’d be some serious havoc, wouldn’t it, girl? No, demons can only cross over when a portal is open.”
I was almost afraid to ask. “So how do portals get open?”
“Got a few sorcerers in this world who know how to do the dark tricks, but even they can’t hold a portal open for long. Get one, maybe two, demons at a time that way. But when there’s a natural convergence like we got coming up . . . ”
“Okay, slow down. What the devil are you talking about?”
“The next full moon, pet. We’ve got a full-fledged interdimensional convergence coming up. You know what that means?”
“I’m going to go out on a limb and guess the end of the world.” I wished I could say I didn’t believe any of this crap, but I’d just awakened in another body, so I was pretty much all about the bizarre right then.
“My star pupil. Only trust me when I say there are a hell of a lot more than four horsemen. Do you think that would be pretty? Do you think the world as we know it would survive?”
“Wait,” I said, because even though my tolerance for all things freaky had increased, this still crossed the line into seriously fucked-up. “Back up. What?”
“A group of demons is preparing to open the last of the nine gates to hell,” he said slowly and clearly. “Over the course of millennia, the other eight gates have been permanently sealed. But this one—” He cut himself off with a shake of the head. “Well, they just might manage to get this one open.”
“But . . . But . . . . . .as still about seven steps behind him. “Even if everything you’re saying is true, what’s that got to do with me?”
“The prophecy. That’s where you come in. You’re gonna protect it, Lily. You’re gonna stop the demons and lock the gate up tight.”
“Are you crazy?” I asked, thinking that he most likely was. “I’m not—I mean, how? How could I possibly manage that?”
He lifted the bottle of beer, his head cocked to one side as he examined me critically. “You really don’t know? You remember so little?”
“Dammit, Clarence. Just tell me.”
“You’re an assassin, Lily. And if the prophecy is true, you’re a damn important one, too. It’s you who’s going to kill the demons. It’s you who’s going to stop the ceremony.”
“An assassin,” I repeated, completely dumbfounded. “That’s insane.”
“Is it? You’ve already picked up a gun to hunt down a man. Now you’ll use a blade.”
“No. No.” An assassin? Not damn likely. “I did the hunting and killing thing once. Once,” I repeated, my voice tight. “And I had good reason. That son of a bitch destroyed my sister. Fourteen years old, and she was in the hospital for a week, her face so swollen I could barely recognize her, her vagina so ripped she needed stitches. Fourteen years old.”
I could barely see him through the red haze of my memories. “He sent her postcards after. Called her. Stalked her.” I caught a memory of Rose
falling to her knees in terror, and me standing right there, promising to make it all better even as I burned with rage and the violent desire to rip Johnson to pieces.
“He wasn’t going after her when you went out to kill him,” Clarence said, his voice as flat as his eyes.
I lifted my chin. No way—no way—was I feeling guilty for that. “He destroyed her. He fucking destroyed her and they just kicked him back onto the street.” I trembled, sucked in a hard breath, and faced Clarence dead-on. “I went after him. Only him. And I had damn good reasons. But I’m not a killer. That’s not me. It’s not who I am. It’s not what I do.”
“Don’t think of it as killing. Think of it as saving the world.”
“But—”
“Look,” he said sharply, “what did you want to be when you grew up? Before your life made a left turn, I mean.”
I clenched my teeth together and didn’t say a word. I really wasn’t interested in playing mind games. I needed to think. Needed to figure out what I was going to do about being stuck in a body in Boarhurst while Rose was unprotected and alone in the Flats.
“Humor me,” he said. “Before. What did you want to be?”
“A doctor. I wanted to be a doctor.” That dream had died with my mother. When my stepfather had sunk into uselessness and I’d become the one who had to put food on the table at the ripe old age of fourteen. I love my stepfather—or at least I know that my mom loved him. But sometimes I hate him for his weaknesses. And for not protecting me as I tried to protect Rose.
“Pretty self-sacrificing profession, medicine. Putting others first. Taking care to keep other people safe.”
“It is,” I agreed. “And in case you missed the memo, I’m not a doctor.” The most I’d been able to manage was a few EMT courses picked up when I landed a job with shifts that lined up with the community college schedule, and when I could scrounge or steal money that didn’t have to go toward food or the mortgage or the occasional hit. Most often, schedule and money didn’t align.
I’d told no one, not even Rose. If I didn’t finish, I didn’t want the stink of failure on me any more than it already was.
And it was there all right, that rotten smell of decaying dreams. My failure had come complete with cliches—bad jobs, a few bags of pot or hits of X on the side, a wallet lifted here and there if I didn’t think the owner would miss the cash too much, pirating DVDs and selling them under the table, and more shit, too, if I took the time to think about it. And, yeah, I even slept with a few guys I didn’t like because I figured I could hit them up for a loan-turned-gift.
I’m not proud, but I did what I had to do, and I’d kept a roof over our head even when Joe did nothing but stare at the wall and scratch his ass.
I looked at Clarence defiantly through the haze of broken dreams. “I’m not a doctor. I’m not even close.”
“Aren’t you? Maybe you don’t got a caduceus on your sleeve, but you went out to protect Rose.” He leaned in close, his eyes so knowing it made me want to cry. “You did what you had to do so that she didn’t have to feel the pinch. You did it even knowing that in the end, it wasn’t going to be good.”
I licked my lips, remembering the feel of the gun in my hand as I’d made my way into the basement room Johnson had rented. I’d known I was going to die. I hoped I wouldn’t, don’t get me wrong, but the odds weren’t great. I didn’t care. I was willing to go into the blackness—the nothingness—that had terrified me so much as a kid. I was willing—so long as I could take him out with me.
I went out, in other words, intending to kill.
“Well, there you go.”
But that didn’t mean any of this made sense. I couldn’t wrap my mind around why I was there. Why I was being given a second chance. I didn’t get it. I really didn’t.
Clarence sighed. “Come on, Lily. You ain’t here ’cause you were a saint. A saint wouldn’t need redemption, would she? No, girl, you’re here because your intentions earned you another shot. What you did for your sister. Going out like that. Facing a monster like that. That was one hell of a sacrifice you were willing to make.”
I blinked. Slowly . . . very slowly . . . maybe this was starting to make some sense.
“So here’s the deal, kid. This is just like when you wanted to be a doctor—just like when you went all out to protect Rose. Only now you’re protecting the whole big world. Keeping us all safe from demons and those that do their bidding. The enemy. The ones who are trying to bring a scourge upon the earth. To eradicate good. To destroy humanity. To bring hell to the surface and desolation to the land.”
He pointed at me, his face animated. “And you, Lily—you’re a barrier against their efforts. You’re body armor protecting the whole human race. The secret weapon that’s gonna fight to make the world right. And your first job’s protecting the Ninth Gate.”
I swallowed and tried to keep my face from betraying my emotions, which was ridiculous considering the little beast could get inside my head. But you know what? I didn’t much care. Because I felt something inside me right then, something I hadn’t felt in a long time. I felt hope.
More than that, I felt special. They wanted me. Lily Carlyle. They’d plucked me from death and told me I was special.
And how cool was that?
Except . . .
I gnawed on my lower lip.
“What?” Clarence said, eyes narrowed.
“You said something about a prophecy. Are you sure that’s me?”
“You gotta have more faith in yourself, kid. And in us.” He cocked his finger at me. “Trust me. The prophecy points to you. Only question now is, do you step up to the plate?”
I ran my fingers through my hair, getting them tangled in the unfamiliar length. I’m not sure why I was hesitating, because there was no way I was backing off from this. Like he said, I’d been chosen. I’d been plucked from obscurity to make the bad guys pay.
Men like Lucas Johnson.
I stood up and started pacing the room, the something I’d called hope growing in me. I hadn’t felt it in a long time. Not since before my mother died. So fragile I wasn’t even sure I should look at it. But it was there, peeking up out of the muck. A chance for a purpose. For a future.
And, yeah, a second chance at Johnson, too.
“It’s yours if you take it,” Clarence said, peering at me through narrowed eyes, his expression unreadable. I looked down, not wanting him to see the thoughts of revenge in my head. I had a feeling they were less than holy.
“What if I say no?” I asked, knowing there was no way I would. I was too pumped by the idea. Too keen on the prospect of doing whatever it took to wipe out the kind of evil that made men like Lucas Johnson tick.
“Is it something you’re likely to say?”
I shook my head.
“Good. Because that would put you right back at square one, the sins of your acts staining your soul.” He slipped his hand into a deep pocket of his trench coat and pulled out a lethal-looking blade, then shrugged ruefully. “And your blood staining this blade. Rules are rules.”
“Holy crap! What kind of an angel are you?”
He slipped the knife back out of sight. “I never said I was an angel. I just work here. And now so do you.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“All right,” I said, starting to get used this Über-girl idea. “Let’s say I do this thing. What exactly does that mean? How am I supposed to protect this gate?”
“Good question, pet. Like to see you’re on top of your game.”
“Clarence . . . ”
“First, you find them. The ones who seek to open the gate. Then you stop them. Turn their plans right around on them. Kill the demon priest and use the key to lock the gate instead of giving them a chance to perform the ceremony to open it. Oh, yeah. It’s gonna be a beautiful thing.”
“What ceremony?” I asked.
“A dark ritual, recently discovered, revealed in a scroll buried deep in a mountain in Turkey. Laid it all ou
t. The ritual. The talismans. They get going on it, and poof. Too late’s gonna come barreling down on us.”
I swallowed. “When? When are they doing this thing?”
“Soon. We’ve learned that they still need one item. The Box of Shankara. Open the Box during the ceremony, and it turns into a doorway, creating a portal to hell.”
“Oh. Wow.” Overwhelming much? “That sucks the big one.”
“You could say that.”
“And I’m supposed to jump in and muck up the ceremony?”
“We don’t even want it to get that far. Our first line of defense is the Box. More specifically, the Caller.”
“Oh. What’s a Caller?”
“A demon possessed of the power to Call the Box back to him from another location. Even another dimension. Ancient stories say the Box was hidden away a couple thousand years ago. A Caller can bring it back.”
“Oh. So not just any old demon can do that?”
“Different demons got different skills.”
I pondered that. Demon sub-specialization. Who knew?
“So how do I find the Caller?”
“Well, that’s the problem, pet. We don’t have a way to find the Caller. So instead, we’re going to find what he’s looking for.”
“The Box,” I said, because, hey, I’d been paying attention.
“A gold star for you.” He grinned at me. “Give me your arm, and let’s see if the bastard has summoned the Box yet.”
“Excuse me?” I protested as he took my hand and pulled it toward him, stretching out my arm. “Hey!”
He’d pulled out a knife and was muttering over it in some language I didn’t understand.
“Hello! What are you doing?” I tried to jerk my hand free, but he had me tight.
“Lily,” he said sharply. “Be still.”
And while I reeled from the verbal bitch slap, he sliced my arm horizontally, just below my elbow.