by Harvey Click
“You’re going to show me where my baby is now, or you won’t be alive for a thousand seconds,” Amy said. She and her friends all had their swords drawn.
Terra smiled and said, “Follow me.” They followed her into the elevator and she pressed the down button.
“We want our own swords back,” Joe said. “There are still demons around here, and these swords won’t kill them.”
The elevator stopped on the second floor, and they went to Terra’s bedroom and got their own swords and knives. Then they took the elevator to the first floor and followed her through a maze of narrow hallways to a locked door. She unlocked it and swung it open.
A young woman was sitting in a chair beside a baby crib, and in the crib sat Emily. She had turned her head to look at the door, and when Amy rushed up to the crib and picked her up she began to cry.
“Hey, that’s the messiah’s baby,” the woman said. “Leave her alone!”
Terra held up Godson’s head and said, “Shut the fuck up.”
Emily was wearing pink pajamas and smelled as if she needed a diaper change. Amy kissed her and said, “It’s Mommy, sweetheart, it’s Mommy.”
Now Amy was crying and Emily had stopped. She tugged a handful of Amy’s hair and said something that almost sounded like “Mommy.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Joe said.
Terra led them along more twisty corridors to the foyer, where Carlos and the two Irregulars lay swollen with venom and partially eaten. The wrought-iron furniture had been pulled out of the doorway, but whatever demons or Nephilim had removed it were no longer in sight.
Joe glanced out of the doorway, then stepped out and peered into the school bus.
“It looks clear,” he said, “but there might be demons hiding behind the seats.”
He and Shane climbed into the bus with their swords ready. A minute later they stepped out and Joe said, “It’s okay. Let’s get this steel off the windshield so we can see where we’re going.”
He and Shane pulled the plates off the windshield while the others climbed aboard. Lucky’s body was still sprawled in the seat where they’d put him, but there wasn’t much left except bones with strings of red flesh hanging from them.
Before Azura climbed in she turned to Terra and said, “I’ve been waiting most of my life to see you. And now I hate you more than anyone on earth.”
Terra smiled and said, “Oh dear, you’re going to hurt my feelings.” She turned her back and disappeared into the citadel, still carrying Godson’s head.
Shane started the engine and drove slowly toward the road. A few dead disciples and Nephilim were scattered here and there on the ground with demons clustered over them like vultures. Maybe some of them had also been dead just an hour ago, killed by the venom of other demons, but now they were alive again and hungry.
Amy stared at them through the shooting hole of her window. She held Emily close to her breast, stroking her wispy hair and murmuring to her. Azura sat beside her and kept reaching over to tickle Emily’s chin or ear, but it was obvious she knew nothing about babies and wasn’t sure how to behave around them.
They parked at the stand of piñon and got out. Joe pointed at the sky where two harpies were flying above them and said, “Keep your swords ready. There might be more demons hidden in these trees.”
Amy found a box of diapers in the Jeep and laid Emily on the backseat to change her. Azura stood and watched her, standing so close she felt like a Siamese twin.
“I can’t drive a car,” she said. “And I don’t have any place to go anyway.”
“Okay then, get your things and put them in the back,” Amy said.
“Thanks.”
She watched as Azura went to Bill’s black van and got her few belongings. Amy wanted to leave with her husband and her baby and nobody else, especially not with Azura. She knew Azura would be difficult to get rid of, and already the two of them were more closely tied than she wanted. She was afraid having Azura with them would change her marriage and maybe many other things—but the girl needed a place to go and things changed whether you wanted them to or not.
They were both covered with gore, and after Azura had put her belongings in the back of the Jeep they undressed beside it and put on clean clothes. It seemed Azura took much longer than necessary putting on hers, and while she was still naked she smiled at Amy and said, “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know.”
“We’ll have fun, won’t we?”
“I don’t know.”
On the other side of the Jeep, Nyx asked, “What are we going to do with Lucky’s car?”
“We’ll have to leave it here,” Joe said. “He was smart enough not to have anything in it that would tie him to us.”
“What about his body?”
“We’ll say our words over it and then burn the bus.”
“Somebody should take his watch as a keepsake,” Shane said. “It was his favorite possession.”
“I’d like to have it,” Nyx said.
They went back into the bus and she carefully removed the watch and fob from what was left of his vest. “He always said his luck would be good as long as it kept running,” she said.
“Is it still running?” Joe asked.
“It is.” Nyx tucked it into her jeans pocket and said, “We argued all the time, Lucky, but you were my friend and I’m going to miss you. I’ll keep your watch with me and think of you every day.”
“Lucky, I thank you with all of my heart,” Shane said. “You gave your life to help us.”
Clutching Emily close to her breast, Amy said, “Goodbye, Lucky, and I pray you’re in a better place. When my daughter is older I’ll tell her about the great hero who died to save her.”
“You were a good warrior and a good friend, Lucky,” Joe said. “I will remember you always with respect.”
Azura stepped up to the body and said, “You were one of my best friends, Lucky, and I’ll never forget you.”
They got out, and Joe brought a can of gasoline from his vehicle and sloshed some of it around inside the bus. Amy strapped Emily into the baby seat in the back seat of the Jeep and got in beside her. Shane climbed in behind the wheel and started the engine. He looked a bit surprised when Azura got into the passenger seat beside him, but he said nothing.
They sat there without speaking and watched Joe light a rolled-up newspaper and toss it into the bus. He walked slowly to his Santa Fe, limping a little, and pulled onto the road. Shane followed him.
Amy saw two listeners and a babbleboon running away into the desert, maybe frightened by the fire, and in the air above them a hell-kite flew. She didn’t know where Shane was planning to go, and she didn’t really care so long as it was someplace far away. Any place would feel like home so long as her baby was with her.
Beside her Emily shut her eyes, unfurled her tiny fists, and began to slumber.
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Also by Harvey Click
Demon Frenzy
Sometimes going home again is a lot like going to hell.
Searching for her lost brother, Amy Jackson returns to her isolated hometown in the Appalachian Mountains. But Blackwood has changed. Now it’s run by a mysterious drug lord who has something more lethal than guns to protect him. He has demons—more vicious, venomous demons than even Hieronymus Bosch ever dreamed of—and after Amy witnesses an unspeakable atrocity he unleashes all the frenzied furies of hell against her. Soon she is stalked by snakewalkers, herky-jerkies, toadfaces, listeners, harpies, centicreepers, and the sinister crying man, who weeps while he torments his victims.
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The House of Worms
Dexter Radcliff’s elderly great-aunt owns an ancient Native American artifact called the Talking Horn that allows one to speak with the dead, and when Dexter’s carele
ssness causes the Horn to be stolen he is plunged into a nightmarish struggle with the Lost Society, a vast narco-terrorist network of occult assassins led by a dead sorcerer. But Dexter’s problems have just begun—soon he will have to contend with parasitic brain-eating worms, sinister Longevitals who can live a very long time thanks to a hermetic treatment, a “Twisted Zoo” containing among its horrific exhibits Dexter’s murderous atavistic twin, “spectreholes” that open spectral doorways to other worlds, and a hellish monstrosity older than mankind that is preparing to return to earth and return earth to primordial chaos.
This grisly novel is not for the timid. The first chapter entices the readers like a bloody fishing lure, and each following chapter drags them deeper and deeper into a swirling maelstrom of horror.
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The Bad Box
Sarah Temple hopes to find a bit of peace and quiet when she leaves her abusive boyfriend, but instead she finds a world of horror. It’s bad enough that a sadistic serial killer and another maniac are both trying to murder her, but what’s worse is the mysterious Solitary One who controls both of them, a malevolent entity that the serial killer describes as a living darkness, a man and yet not a man, something that’s alive and yet not alive, something that wants to appall the world.
Trying to flee from the two killers, Sarah finds herself running deeper and deeper into a deadly supernatural trap, a place where people are buried alive, where ghastly apparitions mutter in the dark, where demented killers prowl, where a crumbling haunted house can drive its victims mad with terror, and where something buried for a very long time may walk again.
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