5.0 - Light Of The Stygian Orb

by Krista Walsh

  Another crash, as though the demon had thrown the other man across the room. As the reverberations echoed under the bathroom door, Zach took the opportunity to smash the glass, freeing up space for him to wriggle through the window. The sleeve of the lab coat caught and tore across the seam, but the thickness of his leather coat underneath prevented him from getting cut. He dropped the screen onto the fire escape as he grabbed the railing and pulled himself through, landing on the top step.

  A door slammed inside, and then everything went quiet.

  Zach remained still on the fire escape while he planned his next move. As the silence stretched on, he considered the wisdom of sneaking back in and grabbing the rest of the file before he headed out, but then the bathroom door opened.

  “Son of a bitch,” the manager mumbled, and his voice sounded nasal, as though he were speaking with a broken nose. After the noise from the office, Zach thought the man had gotten off lucky. “What the hell? What happened to my window?”

  Zach didn’t waste any more time. He grabbed hold of the railing and threw himself over the side of the fire escape, dropping out of sight onto the landing below. Scrambling to find his footing, he darted down the stairs toward the parking lot. He reached the pavement and ran along the wall of the building, crossing his fingers that he could make the last few steps to the corner before Ott spotted him.

  Once he rounded the corner and emerged from the shadows beside the building, he slowed to a less suspicious space. The rush of success buzzed through his veins. Although they would know someone had broken into the office, no one would be able to trace it back to him. At most they’d see a large man in a lab coat on their fuzzy security videos the next morning.

  Now he just had to walk out of here as though he were leaving for the day. Just one of the boys heading home after work.

  “Hey!”

  The shout turned Zach’s blood to stone as the warmth of victory evaporated. He didn’t stop walking.

  “You there, in the coat. Stop!”

  Zach didn’t listen, keeping his measured pace toward the gate.

  Footsteps pounded the pavement behind him. Something pierced his lower back and an electric charge cut through him, jerking his muscles.

  A goddamned taser?

  He tore himself away and whirled around to find the security guard who had been inside, sleeping so cooperatively, standing a few feet behind him. He stood with his feet shoulder-width apart, the taser between his hands, and an expression of shock on his open-mouthed face. Apparently he’d been prepared for Zach to drop at the impact.

  Zach peeled off what was left of the lab coat, taking the wires from the taser with it, and threw it to the ground. He didn’t want to engage. This human would be all too easy to snap if he let himself, but he wasn’t that type of demon. He didn’t want to be the man who destroyed something just because it was weak. His angel side stirred alongside the demon, urging him to put this man in his place, and he shut those thoughts down as well.

  But the guard wouldn’t let it rest. He fumbled with his radio and shouted, “Intruder in Quadrant A not responding. Repeat, intruder in Quadrant A. Require backup.”

  Zach’s shoulders bunched up to his ears, and he squeezed his hands at his sides. He didn’t want to do this. He’d come here for information, not a fight.

  He kicked himself for being such an idiot in believing he’d made it out without trouble. He should have remained on alert until he was safely off the property. His overconfidence was about to get this guy’s ass kicked.

  More running footsteps reached the parking lot. Zach turned around to take in the two guards now blocking off the gate. They didn’t appear to be nearly as shaky in their knees as Sleepy behind him.

  Both of them had their tasers out.

  “Put your hands up and remain still,” one of the men ordered. He stood nearly as tall as Zach, although not quite as wide. The second man could have been the first’s blond-haired twin.

  “I don’t think so,” Zach replied.

  He continued forward. Both men fired their tasers, but this time Zach was prepared and leapt out of the way.

  Rage flared in his blood and swept through his arms into his hands, but he held back. If he let even a hint of his demon loose, these men would die. He had to remain in control.

  The man who had shouted approached, and Zach swung out his fist, catching him in the jaw. The blond flew at him next, his own fists flying. Zach ducked under one arm, and the other punch landed harmlessly on his shoulder.

  Sleepy darted forward, but all it took was for Zach to deliver a backhanded blow to his cheek to force him back.

  By then, Tough Guy Number One had recovered. His stance was solid, his fists closed in front of him. This was a man used to a fight. He darted a punch to Zach’s cheek and caught him before Zach could dodge. Lights danced in his eyes, but he wasn’t dazed. Without delay, he grabbed the guard by the front of his vest and swung him into his partner.

  Sleepy staggered to his feet, but Zach brought his closed fist down on the back of his head, and he collapsed to a heap on the ground.

  Sweat dripped down Zach’s spine and pooled in the small of his back. He tasted blood and wiped it off on his sleeve.

  Another voice shouted from above. Zach glanced up to find a man staring at him from a window on the third floor. His eyes were wide with alarm, and he was shouting to someone inside.

  Before things got really messy, Zach grabbed the two remaining guards by the backs of their necks and slammed their heads together.

  They dropped and he ran, the page from the folder burning a hole in his pocket. He just hoped his idiocy would prove to be worth it.

  9

  Molly shifted her weight on what she had come to see as “her” crate in front of the gas stove. The chill in the air had grown greater this evening, so she’d pulled herself as close to the stove as she could manage. Zach had tugged her back when she’d placed herself nearly up against the metal surface.

  She guessed she’d been here for about half an hour, but so far neither she nor Zach had said anything since his initial attempts to convince her to go home.

  “It might not safe here tonight,” he’d said, as if that would be enough to get her to leave.

  “Is it ever safe here?” she’d asked. “Walking home would be just as dangerous at this point, and I figure I’m safer here with you than on my own.”

  She’d crossed her arms and widened her stance. For a minute she’d sensed the tension as he worked out his internal debate, but in the end it seemed he’d given up trying.

  When the silence stretched out, she kept hoping he would tell her why tonight was more “not safe” than usual, but he said nothing. By the heaviness in the air, she could tell that Zach’s mind was somewhere else, and without any distraction at hand, she found her thoughts veering toward the argument she’d had with Steve and how she had lied to him about coming here again.

  “I guess it was kind of a crappy day for both of us, huh?” she said at last. After the silence in the room, her voice sounded particularly loud.

  Zach grunted in response. The noise had become familiar to her over the last couple of days, communicating more than just a simple expression of agreement. In it, she recognized his stress, as well as his desire not to talk about it. Sometimes she let it go, but today she needed something to drag her out of her own problems.

  “What did you get up to?”

  “Nothing, kid,” he said.

  “You sound funny. Like your lip is swollen. Did you hurt yourself?”

  For a while he didn’t answer, and then, “Some guy thought it would be a good idea to throw a couple of punches, that’s all. Nothing I won’t heal from.”

  Molly shifted on her crate to face him. “Punches? You were close enough to someone today to let him punch you? What could have been so important to drag you out of your cave?”

  She asked the question partly to tease him about his hermitism, but also out of a deep curiosit
y to know more about this demonic angel who had watched over her for the past year. He claimed to never leave the college during the day, so what kind of trouble could he have gotten himself into?

  “It’s nothing,” he said.

  “You could keep telling me that,” said Molly, “or you could just tell me what the hell happened so I stop asking. Does it have anything to do with those demons you were telling me about? The ones you think are stalking you?”

  Another stretch of silence. “Maybe,” he said at last. “The demon who approached me made reference to some company he claimed to be working for. I wanted to find out if that company might be up to something shady. I didn’t make my way out as quietly as I hoped I would.”

  “More shady than a group of stalking demons? I had no idea New Haven was so rife with intrigue. Is it shady in an otherworldly way? Something scary?”

  “I don’t know,” he growled. “Your city isn’t as clean and white as you think it is, although if you didn’t believe that the first time I told you, I doubt you’ll believe it now.”

  He seemed to be saying the second half of the sentence more to himself than to her, but Molly didn’t care. Her curiosity had been captured.

  “Are you going to try to put a stop to whatever it is? Can I help?”

  “I don’t know, and no,” he said. “I don’t know if there’s anything I need to stop, but even if there were, I wouldn’t let you get within a hundred miles of it. Quit trying to push yourself, kid. I know you think you’re all grown up and have all the answers, but you’ve got a lot to learn about the world before you rush in to try to save it.”

  His words punctured the bubble of excitement that had grown at the thought of jumping in on his mission. Molly’s shoulders slumped as the truth of his statement settled over her.

  “I know. I can’t even figure out how to balance my friendships between the otherworldly and the mundane, let alone protect one from the other.” She snorted. “Being sixteen really sucks sometimes. There are all these things I want to do to make a difference in the world, but I can’t do any of them because I’m too young or don’t know how. Or can’t drive myself to get there.”

  She rested her chin in her hand and played with the fringe on her scarf.

  For the fourth time in the last twenty minutes, she slid her hand into her pocket and felt for her phone. No vibrations, no messages. Part of her had hoped that Steve would check in to make sure she was tucked up in bed, but so far her phone remained still.

  “That’s a cheerful attitude to have,” Zach said, cutting into her thoughts.

  “You’re one to talk about cheerful.”

  “I never claimed to be. But this kind of talk is not what I would have expected to hear from you.”

  “Is that your way of asking me what’s wrong?”

  “If it makes you stop moping, sure.”

  Dusty meowed at Molly’s feet, and a moment later, her paws rested on Molly’s knees. Molly sat up straight to give the kitten room to climb onto her lap, which she did without hesitation. The points of her claws dug through Molly’s jeans and into her thighs as she settled herself and curled into a ball. Her purrs vibrated against Molly’s belly. Even in the last couple of days, it seemed that the kitten had gotten heavier.

  “You’re the third person to call me on that today,” she said.

  “If you didn’t want people to point it out, you should get better at hiding your mood,” Zach said. “I don’t care if you don’t want to tell me, but with a pout like that, it seems like you’re fishing for someone to ask.”

  His observation rankled, and Molly worked to twist her expression into something more neutral. When she couldn’t manage to remove the crease between her brows, she sighed.

  “I just had a bad day, that’s all. I finally mentioned you to Steve. You know, the guy I’m crazy about, but who doesn’t feel the same about me — but you don’t care about that.” She realized she’d gone on a tangent about one thing, when she should have paid more attention to another. “You don’t need to worry that I went into a bunch of details about you. I didn’t even give him your name, so it’s not like he’ll be able to track you down. I doubt he’d try even if he did know where to find you.”

  She waited for Zach to assure her that it was fine, or to lecture her about keeping secrets, but the only response she received was more silence, so she continued. “I thought he’d be blown away by the fact that there’s this whole other side to the world, but he’s so focused on boring things, like school. Instead of wanting to know more about you, he’s determined to believe you’re some creep who’s trying to be gross with me or something. He wasn’t listening to what I was saying. It’s so frustrating. It’s like I’m going down this really cool path and learning all these things, but the only person I can talk about it with is the person who’s teaching me. It’s…lonely.”

  She was no stranger to lonely, but this time it felt different. At least she’d always had Steve and her parents to talk to, but she couldn’t include them in this.

  Zach made a low noise that she interpreted as yet another one of his grunts, but instead of leaving it as his only reply, he surprised her by saying, “Welcome to the otherworld, kid. It’s a lonely place. It’s not like we have a bunch of bars where we meet up at the end of the week, or get-togethers in church basements where we talk about the struggles of being a demon in a human world. Everyone’s desperate to keep their secrets. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that your friend is one of us and is using denial as a method to keep suspicion away from him.”

  Molly’s mouth fell open, and she worked to close it again. “Steve, supernatural? No, I don’t believe it. I would know it if he was, wouldn’t I? He would have told me. Especially now that I’ve come out and said I wouldn’t run away scared if I met someone who was. But even if he didn’t reveal himself, you’ve told me enough that I would recognize the signs, wouldn’t I?”

  “Probably not,” Zach said. “If you were really paying attention, then maybe, but the best of us know what we’re doing and how to blend in. Even otherworldly beings can’t usually pick each other out of a crowd, unless they have an ability to detect it.”

  “But…” Molly’s brain pounded as her memories with Steve flew through their three years together, analyzing every moment for any trace of otherworldly qualities.

  “I’m kidding,” Zach said, bringing her thoughts to a sharp stop. “I’d know if he was, and he isn’t. Definitely just a boring suburban human who doesn’t want to step out of his boring suburban lifestyle.”

  Although she wanted to smack him for even suggesting that something as incredible as Steve being otherworldly might be possible, something in Molly’s chest eased. She gave it a rub to loosen the tense muscles below her collarbone. “That’s good to know. Thanks.”

  “My point is, he probably thinks you’re insane, rambling off about things like monsters and magic. He’d be insane not to think you’re insane. Even if he thinks you might be telling the truth, he doesn’t want to seem insane by admitting he believes you. How do you think we’ve hidden in the open for as long as we have? Mundane people don’t want to believe. They don’t want to see it. They like their lives the way they are, and they don’t want anything as crazy as magic to make them realize they’re not at the top of the food chain.”

  Molly shivered. “When you say it like that, you make us sound like cattle.”

  “In the eyes of some species, that’s exactly what you are.”

  “Again, thanks.”

  “You wanted to know.”

  Molly didn’t have anything to say to that. He was right. She knew that not everything she learned would be pretty.

  “Think about your reaction when you first learned about us. You were right there in the middle of it, the only human among six different species, and you still fought against the truth.”

  Her memories jumped back to her arrival in Jermaine’s magically sealed room. She’d sworn they were all having her on until th
e stories had started. It amazed her now that she’d tried to deny it when the evidence had been right there: One moment she was in her bedroom doing homework, and the next, she was trapped in a small damp room. What other explanation could there have been?

  She tried to apply that line of thinking to her experience with Steve. “So…do you think there’s a chance that although he’s going along with the conversation, he doesn’t believe me?”

  It seemed impossible. He would have said something if he thought she was just making up stories. Wouldn’t he?

  A loud crash came from somewhere nearby. Dusty jumped from Molly’s lap, leaving her legs aching with the puncture of her claws, and Molly sensed the change in the air as Zach rose to his feet beside her.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Stay here,” he said. “Do not leave this room.”

  He stepped away from her, and the door to the room creaked open. Molly hesitated only a moment before she grabbed her bow from where she’d deposited it on the floor beside her crate and went after him. To hell if she was going to be left behind.

  She followed Zach through to the boiler room, then up the stairs to the main floor. He was grumbling to himself at such a low volume she couldn’t decipher the words — which was probably for the best — but he didn’t try to send her back. He probably knew she wouldn’t listen to him if he tried.

  With everything she already knew, and the smaller tricks Zach had taught her over the last couple of days, she felt confident enough that she could hold her own. Curiosity was tamping down any concern she might have that she was getting in over her head.

  Until she sensed what was waiting for them outside.

  Cool air hit her face as Zach opened the side door, and the whiff of something potent and unpleasant tickled her nose. Sickly sour, like rotting meat, mixed with something so bitter it coated her tongue and choked her. She tightened her grip on her bow and drew an arrow from the quiver at her thigh.

  Her heart pattered and her mouth went dry. The desire to change her mind and go back inside pushed at her, tugging her backward as though someone had grabbed hold of her jacket sleeve, but she ignored it. She couldn’t leave Zach out here alone, even if her legs were shaking.